Left Coast Cowboys

Regular readers have probably noticed that I haven’t been throwing up my usual daily or every other day posts. I’ve been contending with a major technology melt-down that put me days behind in everything. Up here in Sonoma, I’m living a pioneer lifestyle. Well, except for the Wi-Fi. No TV, little radio reception, no landline phone, no DVD players, no neighbors (at least not of the human kind.) I do have spotty cell phone reception. That is when I walk halfway up the hill, stand on my tiptoes and wave the phone over my head. That is if the sunspots aren’t too excessive. Of course, this is not fun at night — especially when there is no full moon — it’s pitch black and Mountain Lions and coyotes are lurking. Those large meat eaters generally are no respecters of the need for cell phone reception. So I depend on that aforementioned Wi-Fi, which is surprisingly reliable due to a repeater on the hill that beams the signal from downtown Sonoma over my hill.

So, the point is, once I’m out here in the wilds of unincorporated Sonoma County, I’ve got a pretty tenuous communications link to civilization.

That’s why it was not the thing to do to blaze up here in such an all-fired rush that I completely forgot to pack my laptop. One major communications link down, but I still had my iPhone. Even with Wordpress for iPhone loaded, it’s really impossible to update a blog. But I could at least check Facebook, text, leave various comments, and, of course, call. That is if I walked up the hill, stood on tiptoe, etc. etc. So that was fine until my iPhone charger decided to give up the ghost. I watched in horrified and increasing silence as the green charge bar faded down and down to one thin red line then the screen went dark. So now, I’m in a moonless night, no neighbors, no communications lines and, did I mention I’m up here because we’ve been having repeated break-ins and I’m supposed to be repelling burglars until we can finish installing the security system?

When America is down to its last pay phone, it will be found in front of a Seven-Eleven.

By about 9PM after a day of radio silence, I was thinking I should at least let Andy know what was happening. That entailed driving to Sonoma and cruising the streets looking for a pay phone. Did you know pay phones have pretty much gone the way of the DoDo? I finally located one, and with the change I’d managed to scrape from under the couch cushions, dialed Andy. On the third number, and at the end of my change supply, I finally reached him and gave him the general situation before the operator asked me for fifty more cents that I didn’t have. Since this pay phone was in front of the Seven-Eleven, I strolled in to buy some reading material for what looked to be a Long Dark Night of the Soul.

You know those disposable cell phones the perps always use on Law & Order? Apparently not available to the average citizen.

Then I saw them. The disposable cell phones. You know, the ones that the perps and drug dealers are always using on Law & Order. In addition to being cheap, they are completely untraceable (at least according to Law & Order), so, if I chose to call a drug dealer or orchestrate a murder-for-hire on my way back to the vineyards, I’d be all set. Armed with a phone and a sixty minute service card, I headed to the counter. I picked up a Slim Jim and a case of beer on the way, just in case I really wanted to live that Gansta life.

Here’s where I learned the first valuable lesson of this whole debacle:

1) There is no customer service at Seven-Eleven. The 19 year old night clerk is NOT going to tell you how to set up your phone. He’s not even going to recommend which one to choose. He’s there to watch you swipe your Credit Card. That’s it.

Unfortunately, these were the only Peeps who had my back during my Long Dark Night of Technology Failure.

Once back at the ranch, I learned the next valuable lesson:

2) Drug dealers on Law & Order have access to disposable cell phones not available to the general public. The phones that YOU buy need to be activated by going on-line or calling FROM ANOTHER PHONE! Gee, if I had another phone — or even leftover change for the payphone — I wouldn’t need this disposable cell phone, now would I?

How do drug dealers on Law & Order get these quick, cheap, untraceable disposable cell phones? The ones available at Seven Eleven required everything back to your Third Grade transcript to activate.

So scary night in the wilderness, hoping this wasn’t the night anyone tried to break in. Not that anyone could sneak up on me. If a leaf falls from a tree a hundred yards away, two terriers here set up ear-piercing barks. But once the alarm was sounded, I didn’t have much recourse. I guess I could run. Or pick up an iron skillet. Or trust to the fear factor that might or might not be produced by twenty pound dogs.

Morning couldn’t come fast enough and, by seven, I was in the car and heading for Target in Napa, the only place I could think of that might have an iPhone charger. My first bit of luck. I arrived at the electronics counter just as the last charger was being picked up by a clerk who was showing it to a customer buying his first iPod. That’s when I learned Lesson Three:

3) With the last charger on the shelf, there is no time for politeness.

I snatched the charger from the surprised clerk and sprinted to the check-out counter.

Only to have my card declined. I made them run it a second time. Declined.

My second piece of luck, I had just enough cash, including the pennies in the bottom of my purse, to buy one charger. That is if the clerk would forgive me one cent of sales tax. She did.

Now off to the bank to see why this card was declined, because with no more cash and a pretty empty larder, I was looking at competing with the dogs for Paul Newman’s Special Blend Dog Food.

Sure enough, the bank confirmed that my card had been hacked. Two $500 charges had gone against it to what sounded like a porn site or an escort service, so they’d frozen it. (Since I’m the only person using this card, and the bank is pretty well-versed in my spending habits, they figured I wasn’t just having a wild night on the town.)

That’s where the bank manager gave me some more valuable lessons for the day:

4) Did you know credit card scammers specifically target tourist towns? And the FBI had apparently rounded up a group of Russians over in Martinez who were targeting Sonoma and Napa destinations. (But there were obviously more at work and still on the loose.)

5) Never, ever use your ATM card for anything but getting cash out of your branch. INSIDE. Apparently, the most common scam is to replace the chip in those sliding devices so the scammers can record loads of card numbers AND pin numbers. Apparently, the targets of choice are gas stations as they are unmanned at night and the perps can rig the pump with no one the wiser. But official bank ATMs have also been hit. Needless to say, avoid like the plague those no-name cash machines.

6) If you buy online or bank online, do it from a Mac. They are either unhackable or thieves can’t be bothered to hack this less populated platform or some combination of the two.

Don't count on terriers in a technology emergency.

As long as the firewood holds out, they can't be bothered.

Okay, a sobering day of lessons learned. Which put me way behind in everything else I needed to do. But fraudulent charges were stopped. A new ATM card was issued. The laptop was delivered this weekend by Andy. My iPhone is up and charging. And I’ve got my drug dealer disposable locked and loaded with 60 minutes and standing by as back up.

And I’ve picked up my shotgun! (More on that tomorrow.)

It's been said before: On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog.

There was a recent dust-up over here involving The Pioneer Woman, the enormously successful cookin’, photographin’, homeschoolin’ Oklahoma blogger who’s built her brand as an Aw-Shucks country girl wife of a cattle rancher. I’m not going to weigh in on the controversy. Enough’s been said about that. But what struck me, in the course of the fall-out, was that the usual criticism of successful bloggers was thrown out on the table — “Her life isn’t really the way she portrays it. She’s not exactly the person she projects herself to be.”

My response? Of course not! It’s the InterWebs. The late great Quentin Crisp once said, “Movies are life with the boring bits taken out.” I’d say that goes double for a blog where you are trying to feed the damn thing nearly every day, hold on to readers and maybe attract some new ones. If Pioneer Woman or Dooce or any other successful blogger detailed their lives in excruciatingly mundane detail — who would read? Okay, some would say PW and Dooce do just that. But I’d wager they actually cherrypick just one or two things that happened to them in the course of a day. Those things that have the ability — maybe with some embellishment and a little Photoshopping — to serve up some entertainment value. That’s life with the boring bits taken out.

I readily accept that the Internet Pioneer Woman and the Internet Dooce might not be the same people recognizable to their closest friends. Same way I accept that the “character” of Ben Franklin in The Autobiography of Ben Franklin was the wiley old Founding Father’s created public persona, the one he wanted posterity to remember. Winston Churchill got it when he said, “History will treat me kindly. For I shall write it.”

Okay, I’m drawing the line at outright fraud and lies such as the whole A Million Little Pieces debacle. I’m with Oprah on that. And I certainly wouldn’t want any bloggers to check their ethics, morals and responsibilities at the door when putting on their “Internet faces”. But hey, it’s Show Biz! That’s the land where serial killer Aileen Wuronos, who looked like 20,000 miles of bad road, is played by Glamazon Charlize Theron. You see where I stand. I’m not one of those people who devour those glossy magazine photo spreads with “Stars. They’re just like us” articles. I don’t want to see my stars spilling lattes on themselves, looking frumpy at Trader Joe’s or splitting the seams of their ill-fitting sweatpants. I can see that in my own life, thank you. Nope, I want entertainment. And if they, or a blogger, stops providing it, I tune out.

For example, one of my favorite bloggers, Mrs. G over at The Women’s Colony, recently told a great story about a near smackdown she had at Starbucks with a rude and abusive woman. It was a great catharsis for those of us who have been on the receiving end of public bad behavior, yet have been too taken aback for action. However, the genius detail that had me on the floor was that Mrs. G perpetrated this smackdown wearing an I [heart] Books T-shirt. Okay, what if that was an embellishment? What if she wasn’t wearing that T-shirt on that particular day? What if, in fact, she doesn’t even own such a T-shirt? Heck, what if the scene was only played out in her mind as what she should have done in hindsight and if she’d not been so nonplussed? I say “no harm, no foul”. No names were mentioned, no descriptions were given. If it was fiction or part fiction or just “enhanced”, it was a heck of a story, great writing and gave me my laugh of the day.

John the Baptist (l) and Jesus (real name) don't mind being characters on my blog. Maybe because I portray them as superheroes. Which they are.

Isak Dineson, she of Out of Africa fame, wrote how the Kikuyu tribespeople on her farm were culturally uncomfortable with the direct questions of Europeans. If Dineson said, “How many cows do you have?”, they’d most likely look away and say something to the tune of “As many as I told you yesterday.” Her conclusion: “They were not strictly truthful, but, in a grand manner, sincere.” That’s all I’m asking of the bloggers I read.

So now I’ve probably cast doubt on the goings on here at Two Terrier Vineyards. I believe I’ve openly stated my position in my How Did We Get Back to the Land page. I quoted the words of fictional Huckleberry Finn when Mark Twain “asked” him to review the book named after him: “Most of it were true, but some of it were stretched.”

Or as John the Baptist — our most excellent trails builder, protector of local flora and forest spirit — says “I like being a character on your blog.”

See, he gets it.

Oscar, on the other hand, says he don't need no steenkin' enhancement.

Yes, we are doing our part here on the Sonoma home front. Our enemy is insidious, all but invisible and skilled in taking advantage of our own resources to further his evil plans. Of course, I’m talking about non-Native plant invaders who are encroaching on our little piece of Sonoma paradise. But our defenses are marshalled. At the risk of a pun, I’ll add that we have a Plan. Yes, we are doing our share.

For those of you who have shown up a bit late, let me give you the lay of the land, as it were. When we purchased this land, it had been virtually undeveloped — except maybe for migrating Miwok Indians who used our seasonal creek as a highway (we’ve found their acorn grinding stones and arrowheads.) Some rusty barbed wire at the edge of the property showed that someone at some time pastured some cattle out here. But elderly locals all tell us this area was always “the back of beyond”. Younger Sonoma residents say this was where they came to drink, smoke pot and make out. The result is a forty acre patch of Sonoma that is almost entirely undisturbed. That means a wide variety of native vegetation and animals — even including a stand of 500 year old Redwood trees that, by all rights, probably shouldn’t even be this far from the coast, and an increasing population of threatened Tree Frogs, who have now grown in significant enough numbers to comprise a veritable Amphibian Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Why We Fight: Checker Lily, Mission Bells or Fritillaria affinis

Why We Fight: Milk Maids or Cardamine californica.

Why We Fight: Indian Warriors or Pedicularis densiflora

Of course, we want to preserve it all. Seems easy. But it’s frightening how fast you can compromise a pristine environment, even if you think you are in preservation mode. First mistake, when the vineyard was put in three or four years ago, we allowed hay bales and straw “snakes” to be brought in for erosion control. Big mistake. Apparently, if you aren’t a careful buyer, these things can harbor all sorts of alien seeds and invasive plants that then take over. And they’ve started their march down the swales and water drainage areas. Apparently we should have specified rice bales, which are not native, but can’t possibly survive in Sonoma once the weather heats up. Next mistake, allowing mustard to be planted as a fallow season crop in the vineyards. Apparently, this plant multiplies faster than Aliens. We now need to plan our strategy for eradicating the mustard.

We're doing it for the critters. Although deer aren't endangered, they've got a clean, well-lighted place to graze here.

I should digress here for a John the Baptist Nature Lesson. Again, if you are showing up late, John the Baptist is our trails man, plant guru and freelance forest spirit. With his trusty lieutenants, Louis and Jesus, he speaks for the plants. Many readers of this blog have written, after reading about our efforts, to ask “Why do you make it sound like Natives are so weak they can’t survive as well as invasive species?” I put that question to John, and here’s his answer: “Natives exist in their landscape in a balance. They have enemies and predators and plants that keep them from overpopulating. Certain non-Natives have no native enemies and they just run wild, choking out all the Native plants.”

So we’ve brought out the Big Guns for the Armageddon of the Vineyards. This year is Blitzkreig. We’re even resorting to selective spraying of Round-Up to kill back some of the invasives that already have a foothold. The marketing information says that this particular formulation dissolves into inert ingredients in three months and doesn’t affect the groundwater. John says he doesn’t believe a thing Monsanto says. But, you’ll see the measure of desperation here. Unfortunately, this is John’s Guantanamo and he’s willing to sanction extreme measures to even the odds. Tell it to Dick Cheney, John!

John the Baptist and Jesus armed for chemical warfare on invasives.

Oscar does his bit with more natural herbicides.

Even shy Lucy Terrier got into the act by killing a gopher...which she promptly gave to her new boyfriend, Jesus.

After this year’s Shock and Awe, we’re hoping that we’ll only have about a 5% recurrance next year. With quick burning and pulling before germination, we should be able to reduce the non-natives in the year after next to about 1% ressurgance. And so it goes.

We're keeping Sonoma safe for Wavyleaf Ceanothus.

Neil Young told us that “Rust Never Sleeps”. Ditto for non-Natives. But we’re at the barricades and we won’t be stopped. With a British husband, it’s now appropriate to misquote Winston Churchill:

“We shall fight in the swales. We shall fight at the creekside. We shall fight in the vineyards. We will never surrender.”

A new project here is to photograph and catalog all the Native California and Sonoma wildflowers that are growing around our little slice of heaven. John the Baptist and Louis are leading the charge by bringing me examples of flowers they find in their trailbuilding work. For now,these bouquets will have to serve as my educational pieces as I’m finding it a lot easier to get good photographs in the wild than when the flowers are picked. I believe I’ve also made my position clear on using common names instead of the Latin. A California Native don’t need no steenkin’ Latin. (Sharp eyes might notice the yellow flower outside the vase that has been chewed and stomped by terriers. It’s one of our despised mustard plants. Decidedly NOT native.)

Here’s a selection of flowers I’ll be searching for this weekend to photograph in the wild:

The white showy flower is Star Lily. I'll give its Latin name since it's named after John C. Fremont, pioneer and relentless booster of California statehood: Zigadenus fremontii.

The orange flower is one of my personal favorites, Sticky Monkey Flower. The red brushy one is Indian Warrior.

Here's a beauty: Checker Lily or Mission Bells.

The name for this one seems to have gone right out of my head. According to my flower book, it looks like Blue Dick or Dichelostemma capitatum.

This poor orange guy is getting a bit crushed, but he's an Indian Paintbrush.

This weekend, we’re going on a Wildflower Safari.

The first tour will be along the banks of The World's Most Beautiful Drainage Ditch.

Addendum: Let me know, Informed Readers, if I’ve misidentified anything.

Anyone who’s been following my blog knows I’ve been under pressure to buy a gun, mostly from the British contingent. As my friend Rob says, “You’re an American. It’s part of your culture.” The plan accelerated two years ago when Republican blog chatter started claiming Obama was going to clamp down on gun ownership. I’d never thought much about having a gun, but when it suddenly seemed as if it was going to stop being easy to get one, I thought more seriously about getting myself armed up. What? You don’t think an East Coast educated Liberal needs a gun? Ever seen Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance? I rest my case.

And you see that’s been my problem. I’ve been basing my gun choices on my favorite cowboy stars. If Clint, John or Gary were packin’ it, I was ready to buy it. My other mistake, apparently, was to work backward from whatever it was I wanted to kill — which was, basically, nothing. Seems that’s the wrong approach. Or at least that’s what they told me today down at The Last Gun Shop.

I'm not sure why it's called The Last Gun Shop. Maybe because you have to get nearly 70 miles outside of San Francisco to find one.

Some situations just call for full disclosure. So when the young (and heavily armed) young man behind the counter asked, “How can I help you”, I spoke right up:

“Can you help a Liberal buy a gun?”

Yes, this pistol-packin' gal here and above is Jane Fonda in her role as Cat Ballou. A great Western comedy, complete with Lee Marvin in a dual role and a drunken horse.

That brought all the tough guys, many in camouflage jackets, crowding around the counter. Clearly I was not a typical visitor to gun shops. Even shops this close to Wine Country. (It should be noted that the town of Napa is actually a lot closer to hunting territory than it is to sipping territory. You have to go up the Valley a bit to find Cabernet instead of Calibers.)

“Well, do you have any idea what kind of gun you are looking for?”

“I kind of had my heart set on a Belle Starr/Miss Kitty sort of thing. You know a derringer. Maybe with a pearl handle.”

My nice young clerk wasn’t even going to dignify this with an answer. So I tried another tack. That full disclosure thing.

“See, I’m living part time out in the country. Alone. And there is a Mountain Lion on our property.”

As he reached for a shotgun that looked as if it would take down a buffalo, I quickly added:

“Oh, I don’t want to shoot the Mountain Lion. In fact, knowing Mountain Lions, I don’t think I’d even see it if it decided to leap off a ledge onto my neck. Actually, we’ve had some break-ins and I was looking for a gun for protection.”

That led to a completely different gun case. But still a series of firearms that looked entirely too deadly for my tastes.

As I gingerly tried hefting some of the rifles, I worked up the courage to make my real goal known:

“You know, I think I just want to scare someone away. What would happen if I shot someone with this gun?”

The answer was short and to the point: “He would die.”

“Um, do you have something that would just spray a little buckshot but not really kill or maim anyone? Kind of like the gun Dick Cheney used to shoot his friend in the face.”

As soon as I said it, I expected a sneer of contempt. But never underestimate the kindness of Gun Shop people.

“Look, why don’t we find you something that’s big enough that the Bad Guys can see it. And that is loud enough that it scares them.”

That's how I found myself holding a pump-action 20 gauge Remington shotgun.

“I think this is going to be the right gun for you”, said my new Gun Shop Buddy. “Listen to the sound of this pump action.”

You know that dramatic Tschhhhhh-Tsch sound when The Man With No Name pumps up his gun before the gunfight? That’s the sound this gun makes.

“There”, said my Gun Shop Buddy, “anyone sane and clean who hears this sound will know you mean business. You won’t even have to fire a shot.”

“Great”, said I, “Just what I want. A pre-emptive firearm.”

“Of course, if a meth-head is coming at you, you’ll completely re-evaluate your desire not to shoot anything.”

Hmmmm. Maybe. But I’m hoping the combination of terrier howling and now my completely bad-ass Western sounding pump action rifle will keep all but the baddest dudes away.

So now I just have to wait out ten days while the ATF checks out if I have any felonies to my name.

Call me a traitor to my political affiliations, but I’m kind of liking the idea of being armed.

My only question now:

Can I get gun racks fitted to my Prius?

Addendum: If you’re stumped by my Liberty Valance reference, this’ll help ya Pilgrim: