Left Coast Cowboys

Our weather in Northern California is possibly even scarier. We’re now in our second extended period of record high, sunny weather since mid-December. It wasn’t much different than sunny and dry last month either. The Sierra snowpack that is our water lifeline is barely 60% of normal. This has been a long time coming. I remember when I moved here over 20 years ago, it was routine to ski over Thanksgiving break. Now it’s rare that you get enough snow to do much skiing until January.

The whole situation is compounded with greater population and aging infrastructure. Yes, GOP, there’s that word infrastructure. Our levees are second in decrepitude to New Orleans’. It would be nice putting some people to work fixing them. Not that our levees are going to break any time soon. More likely, lightning will strike somewhere in May and millions of acres of California will burn to a cinder. Okay, I know many of you will say, “Let California burn”, but you won’t be saying that when you see the price of food. Since we grow most of it, you better hope we get some rain soon. Already, Central California growers are scaling their crop plans back drastically to prepare for severe water rationing.

Usual October activity is getting bales of hay delivered to shore up mudslide-prone areas against torrential rains. Here it is almost February and we haven't even placed them yet.

Let me spell it out for you, we get nearly 100% of our rain between November and February/March, with January usually the wettest month. In normal years, the rain buckets down like a monsoon. Then nada, nothing. Not a friggen drop for the rest of the year. So far, I can count on two fingers the number of real soaking rainstorms we’ve had this year. We are now facing what experts say will surely be a drought of unprecedented scale. Since we’re done with January, it’s almost too late to pray. The rain just isn’t going to come.

We've had such record heat, buds on fruit trees are already sprouting.

I’m not usually violent, but I have to pull myself out of the Red Zone when I hear someone pontificate about how it’s questionable whether we are experiencing Global Warming. Forget the psuedo-science and the people on the Bush payroll who told you otherwise. Just talk to a farmer. Here in California, all you hear is stories such as “Well, we used to grow a lot of [insert crop here] but now it’s too hot. We have to grow it as a winter crop. Soon we won’t be able to grow it at all.”

Surprisingly, Napa Valley is considered an environmental/agricultural hotspot, as in one of the “canaries in the coalmine” for Global Warming. With a climate already on the hottest end of what is acceptable for high-end Cabernet grapes, it’s predicted by many that in less than ten years, Napa’s climate will be too warm for these premium grapes. Sonoma is cooler, with access to some ocean breezes, but we’re next.

Usually, I can see all the way down the Sonoma Valley to the Golden Gate Bridge 60 miles away. It's so hot, an inversion layer is holding in all this smog.

I’d ask you all to ship us some snow, if you think you’ve got too much of it. But perhaps a better solution would be to write your Congressman/woman or Senator — especially if they are Republicans. The time is long past to be quibbling about whether we are or aren’t experiencing Global Warming. We are. The earth is a churning mass of weather patterns. So as it gets increasingly hotter in California, it’s going to get colder and snowier and icier in places like the Midwest.

Where the oak trees protect it, we still have green grass from one of our few rainstorms last month. This will be dry and brown probably next month.

Some experts say the critical time, the last moment when we could have reversed Global Warming with relative ease was in the last decade. You know what happened then. Drill, Baby, Drill!

Let’s stop fiddling while Rome burns. Time to act.

I have a Boston friend who is, as my grandmother used to say, “as Irish as Murphy’s cow”. She’s more than just Boston Irish, she’s “connected” Boston Irish, as in a Godmother in the Murphia. The tentacles of her influence and connection extend across the “pond” to Ireland where she visits frequently and has a vast network of family and friends. So when she wrote to give me the scoop on how our new President was being received in Ireland, well, I accept her word on its own authority.

She says the Irish view of President Barack Obama can best be summed up in this music video. It had me rolling on the ground and not just at the way the Irish pronounce his name “Bear-ACK O’Bama”. You’ll find the words below, should you want to sing along and do a little “Riverdance” step as well.

No one as Irish as Barack OBama

O’Leary, O’Reilly, O’Hare and O’Hara
There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama

You don’t believe me, I hear you say
But Barack’s as Irish, as was JFK
His granddaddy’s daddy came from Moneygall
A small Irish village, well known to you all

Toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a loo, toor a lama
There’s no one as Irish As Barack O’Bama

The great Stephen Neill, a great man of God,
He proved that Barack was from the Auld Sod
They came by bus and they came by car, to celebrate Barack in Ollie Hayes’s Bar

O’Leary, O’Reilly, O’Hare and O’Hara
There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama

By the way, should you find yourself in Boston and want to arrange a charter around Boston Bay, check out Maureen’s company at Smooth Sailing Yacht Charters. Did I mention that this gal is connected?

Well, not exactly. But kind of. In a virtual, Cyber, Internet-y kind of way.

It all starts with Twitter. You probably all know about this group microblogging site. You send out pearls of wisdom in 140 character bites. You never know what will come back. If people like your pearls of wisdom, they “follow” you. Then they automatically get every pearl you roll down that virtual hallway. But the great mass of Twitterers can also stumble over what you write through a search or by wading through zillions and zillions of Tweets.

On this particular day, my pearls of wisdom referred to some Terrier Attitude Problems we’ve been having around our neck of the woods.

I wrote: “Lesson for the day: if two terriers are fighting, don’t think putting your hand between them is going to solve anything.”

One of my followers Tweeted in reply: “You need Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer.”

To which I shot back: “Cesar Millan is a steaming hunk of Latino Charisma. He can give me the Alpha Dog Stare-Down anytime.”

Two minutes later, I got this notification: “Cesar Millan is now following you on Twitter.” I checked the link and it was the REAL CESAR MILLAN. The Ricardo Montalban of the Recall. The Desi Arnaz of the Down-Stay. The Fernando Lamas of the Leashed Set. And he’s brought me into his pack. He is now my Calm/Assertive Leader.

I ask you, is there anyone else today who can even compete for the title of Latino Alpha Dog? Let me make my case:

Okay, Antonio's got that whole wet thing going. And he is doing a pretty good Alpha Dog stare here.

Here's another Latino with a good Alpha Dog stare. But he's looking a little mean. And he's gotten pretty grubby with that Che movie.

Even more ruggedly handsome is Javier Bardem. But frankly, he scared the shit out of us in No Country for Old Men. A little TOO Alpha Dog.

Nope, Cesar’s our man around here.

Now this is Calm/Assertive when you can look hot with Pit Bulls licking your face!

Yup, we’re pretty excited to be in Cesar’s Pack.

We're all in a tizzy thinking Cesar might drop by and give us that SHHHT and leg nudge thing.

Well, I should amend that. Lucy and I are really excited. Little Oscar, not so much.

Some of us change the channel when The Dog Whisperer comes on.

In loyalty to his name-sake, this little Oscar de la Hoya says he bows to a different Pack Leader.

Our Oscar says this Oscar would totally cream Cesar in an Alpha Dog Staredown.

But Lucy and I know Cesar could just breeze away on those roller-blades. Then he’d call in the Pit Bulls.

ALL HAIL CESAR!

 I’ve had some pretty heavy posts recently. Let’s lighten it up. And there’s nothing funnier than the weird shit I’m now pulling out of my kitchen. You see, we’ve lived in our San Francisco house for more than 20 years and I’m doing the once-every-few-decades complete clean-out. This weekend was the kitchen, a project that threatens to continue throughout the week. Or maybe never end. We have deep cabinets and many of them we haven’t seen the back of for more than a decade. Delving into them is a long, dark journey into our souls. Or something. But it’s disconcerting as I’m being confronted with a me I’m not sure I ever was.

For instance, I seem to have been, at some point, the kind of person who accumulates THREE complete fondue sets.

So now I've dedicated an entire cabinet to my fondue collection. I'll have to get a Pucci MuMu and stage a Sixties party.

Then there are the odd glasses and miscellaneous bottles of alcoholic drinks shoved behind a mountain of Tupperware in another cabinet. How about a set of World Cup USA glasses? But it’s the Camp Snoopy glass collection that has me pondering. I’ve never been to Camp Snoopy. I have no kids. I don’t even particularly like Snoopy. Where did these come from? When was I the kind of person who collected Camp Snoopy paraphernalia?

Would the decades old bottle of Triple Sec taste better in a World Cup glass or a Camp Snoopy glass?

And the raisins. In little snacky-pack sized boxes. At one point in my life, I must have really LOVED raisins. Then I decided I hated them. And shoved dozens of these boxes into every recess of every corner and drawer.

It's frightening how many packs of 20 year old raisins I'm finding.

There are the many bottles of strange food items floating in oil. In the dark recesses of my past, I was a person who bought loads of these. Then stuck them in very high cabinets where they could “mature” for several decades.

This one needs carbon dating. I think it's from the Etruscan era.

And on a slightly sad note, it was years ago that I successfully made the transition from cat owner to dog person. I never looked back. I thought. Because, for some reason, I saved every cat bowl I ever had.

Note to Self: Cat bowls are made for shallow-face cats. Long nosed dogs will not and cannot eat from them. Throw out all cat bowls.

Finally, about that Bird’s Custard. If you aren’t English, you may not know how truly disgusting an alleged foodstuff this crap is. It’s a powder that mixes up into a horribly neon pasty goo that has a distinct metallic after-taste. For some odd reason, Brits will take a perfectly fine cake or other dessert and slather it with this muck. They cling to Bird’s Custard as fiercely as we do our peanut butter. (Except peanut butter is good.)

For all I know, this particular can may have travelled over from England in Andy’s suitcase when he was a fresh-faced 25 year old immigrant. This can is so old, it’s rusted, dented and the label is peeling off. There may even have been mouse poo on it. But Andy fished it out of my throw-away pile in horror: “You aren’t throwing away the Bird’s Custard!?” I explained diplomatically that it might have gone bad. “No, Bird’s Custard NEVER goes bad.”

I guess it has the shelf-life of Twinkies.

NEW CONTEST: By popular demand, I will be giving away a Camp Snoopy glass or a moldy can of Bird’s Custard to the reader who leaves the best comment. Need not be British to win the Custard. But you’d have to be British to eat it.

Last week I lost a friend. 

Between the time that I wrote that first line and when I was able to resume was about half an hour. I spent the time staring at my screen and wondering how to write this post. In fact, it’s taken me more than a week to attempt it.

You see, my friend was someone I’d never met in person. In fact, I didn’t know her real first name until shortly before she died. I only learned her last name afterwards.

My friend was someone I met on line in a blog-writing forum. Her pithy funny comments always made me laugh and we soon continued the friendship through Twitter and through daily visits to each others blogs.

For most of this time, I knew her only as Mad Asthmatic. In fact, for the first several months I knew her, I thought she was male. There was something about her writing that made me think of a particularly adventurous Englishman, someone who was constantly trekking off some place with Sherpas. To my ears, her voice was almost Dickensian with its use of words like “whilst”, “tinned food” and her constant sign-off “toodle-pip”. She wrote elegant essays on the lost art of letter writing and the joys of fountain pen and blotting paper. Every now and then she would write a post that gave me a glimpse of the horrendous medical problems she was facing — something that was always jarring as I thought of her as being so full of life and activity. After one or two posts on her medical condition, she’d send me a crisp email or Tweet to tell me to ignore her “pathetic whinging” as she was going to get back on to more interesting subjects. She even wrote a post dissecting the British stiff upper lip.

Reading back on some of her posts now, I’m ashamed that I didn’t realize how sick she really was. It was hard to think of her as a medical invalid as she was so full of plans and projects. She was researching what kind of puppy to get, and much to my approval, she’d decided on a terrier, a West Highland. She talked about traveling to America again. During the Christmas season, she was a positive whirlwind of mince pie baking activity. So I didn’t really give her much sympathy or think of her as ill. I think, in retrospect, she liked it that way.

Because of the time difference between San Francisco and England, we “corresponded” at odd times. She was usually writing and posting while I was asleep. It became a routine for me, when I took the dogs out for their 6AM walk, to come back, pour myself an orange juice and see what MA had written on her blog, the comments she’d left on mine or the pithy, tart private Tweets she’d sent me. They never failed to make me think and often had me laughing.

Then on January 14th, came a post called No Regrets. In a few short paragraphs, it outlined a wise and wonderful program for living. I should have seen it for what it was, a valedictory.  I think she knew at that time, the end was very near.

Ironically, her post came just as I was struggling with the death of another friend, a friend who had expunged me and most of his other old friends from his life when he got married. I was wrestling with my conflicting feelings about the death of a person when I’d been through the grieving stages for his friendship three years before. Mad Asthmatic’s wise words helped me reconcile and come to terms with my feelings and I thanked her in this post. She showed up on my blog afterwards with a very sympathetic comment offering even more wisdom in dealing with the situation. It was the last time I heard from her. She died that weekend.

Now I’m in the strange position of feeling the loss so keenly of someone I didn’t “know” in the traditional sense. Not only had we never met in person, I’d never even seen a picture of her. Her face and demeanor were wholely the product of what I imagined from her words. At first, I was imagining a hybrid between a young Alistair Cooke, one of those intrepid British explorers and perhaps Charles Dickens. When I found out she was female, I amended my image of her to be somewhat of a Jane Austen character. But one who would feel comfortable heading off to a mountain top with those Sherpas. I once compared our friendship to those Georgian and Victorian friendships between famous writers who never met but corresponded avidly. She liked that analogy.

I tried to explain how I felt to someone who doesn’t do much surfing of the Net. He was unsympathetic. “Well, you didn’t really know her.” But I did. I knew her by by the thoughtful, funny and insightful words and thoughts she posted up to Cyberspace. And I believe those words were the essence of who she was.

Recently I wrote about the odd experience of having two Cyberfriends become real. This was a couple I knew only from their pictures and comments from our mutual participation in the Flickr Project 365 photography forum. My image of them was a little clearer as, in the course of each of us posting the required picture a day to Flickr, I’ve seen their pets, watched them on their vacations, viewed their collections and their day to day life. Meeting them was a revelation in that there were no surprises. The personalities they projected on-line were their true and accurate personalities.

I like to think I saw the real MA as well. And I’m glad I had her friendship, if only for much too brief a time.

Top photo by PJ Taylor, one of the Flickr friends I mentioned. I thought it was appropriate to honor one Cyberfriend with the work of another. This photo is of graves at Highnam Parish Graveyard, UK. See PJ’s beautiful photos here.