Anza-Borrego Pull

And thank you all for dropping by today. Let’s give the band a hand . . . yes, yes—aren’t they wonderful! I hope you are enjoying the food; I spent hours picking out today’s menu. My friends all said “You better choose something with a bit of ham. People always like a little ham.” Okay, okay.

Today is my one year blogiversary. So I am celebrating. (Here is my first post.)

Yeah, yeah. Thanks so much. And as such, I’d like to say a few words about the glowing silver cholla cactus that sits atop my blog header (a larger version of the same photo appears above).Back in March of 2005 when the California deserts were experiencing a centennial rainfall year, the desert wildflowers bloomed like never before. I saw whole valleys covered with yellow Desert Sunflowers, purple Sand Verbena and white Dune Primrose. The Ocotillo produce gorgeous red blooms that fly like flags against the blue sky. Jimson weed grows white trumpet-like flowers and cacti of all kinds sprout colorful flowers that emerge from the cactus spikes.
I love the Anza-Borrego desert. It glows in its own starkness. It’s big and clean. I have never seen more stars than the night I slept outside in the desert. It was August and it didn’t cool down until about 3:00 in the morning. Since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I just looked up. No moon. But the sky was littered with diamonds and the Milky Way arced across the heavens.
The next day my friends wanted to go hiking (they were obviously delirious from lack of sleep), but I talked them into retreating to the cool mountains for breakfast instead. Day time temperatures would sore to over 110 degrees F and ground temperatures can reach 140. I didn’t think we could carry enough water. I didn't think it was safe.
The only time to see wild flowers in the desert (there are none in August) is in spring, which can start as early as February. Things are pretty much gone by the end of April, but it always depends on the winter’s rainfall.

The Stories of Eva Luna

With The Stories of Eva Luna, Isabel Allende creates a treasure trove of stories, delicious treats of woven fantasy that explore how people cope with, use, and abuse power. As Allende shows us, power can manifest itself in many ways: in many of the stories she gives us the power of love—how it can bring redemption or destruction. Allende draws for us many powerful women (and men)—people who persevere and tackle poverty, injustice, and brutality. In just a few pages, Allende paints a picture that enthralls you and pulls you into a world that is magical and ethereal.

“Two Words” tells the story of a poor, illiterate girl who learns to read and write with an inborn talent. She makes a living selling words, stories, and letters. She ends up taming the most powerful and feared man in her country with the power of her words and her beguiling spirit.

“Toad’s Mouth” brings us a powerful woman, who mesmerizes and enchants countless men through sexual prowess and who, in turn, is tamed by a mysterious foreigner in a hilarious, bawdy adventure of life in a wild and desolate country.

In one of my favorite stories, “The Little Heidelberg” gives us El Capitán, a Finnish sea captain who has retired in an unnamed Caribbean port and dances weekly with a lovely Russian woman, Eloísa; she smells of chocolate from so many years of making bonbons. While language keeps their communication at bay for forty years, his reticence for speaking is broken when a countryman is able to translate his words for the first time. “Will you marry me?” he asks his long time dance partner and she says “Don’t you think this is a little sudden?” As they dance the celebratory acceptance dance, with each twirl she becomes a bit younger. In the magic of the scene, she twirls out of existence. Her disappearance seems to reflect the dreamscape nature of the scene. Perhaps El Capitán simply imagined asking her and when the music stops, she is no longer there because she had entered his dreams years earlier. We don’t know if her disappearance is her lesson to not wait so long to reveal our true feelings or a magical journey that is unexplained.

Revenge and justice are topics that Allende also explores. In “Revenge” a woman dedicates her whole life to avenging her father’s death. Upon the moment of truth when she must cut down the man she has hunted her whole life, she cannot. Love takes away her ability to carry out revenge. This leaves her unwhole. Her only solution is to take her own life. And the man? He suffers fate worse than the revenge that was long planned for. “. . . he knew he would live to be ninety and pay for his guilt with the memory of the only woman who had ever touched his heart.”

The final story “And of Clay We are Created” is perhaps my favorite for its poignancy and mysticism. It elegantly details the transformation of two people, as well the narrator who vicariously injects herself into the story, in a mingling of spiritual comfort, facing the past, and accepting the present.

This book is one to read, savor, and reread. You will forget the details of a story, and as you go back to reread it, new details will emerge that make the story sweeter, more ironic, and more satisfying.

A Bit About Lady Bird

Lady Bird Johnson died yesterday at her home in Austin, Texas. There was a lengthy article about her in today’s Los Angeles Times describing her role as first lady and some of her accomplishments. Among other achievements, she is credited with paving the way (sweet irony) for the environmental movement of the 1970’s.

Of course, President Lyndon Johnson’s role in the Vietnam War tarnished his laudable part in promoting civil rights. According to the Times article, one of the reasons he declined to run for a second term in 1968 was the civil unrest associated with the Vietnam War. This decision was preceded by a visit from his (pregnant) daughter Lynda, whose Marine husband was about to be deployed to Vietnam. She appealed to her father “Why do we have to go to Vietnam?” That night Johnson announced he would not run again for President and also halted bombing of North Vietnam. You see, it does matter when those who propagate war have something to lose. If our current president, also with two daughters, had a like investment in the war of his own family’s welfare, would different decisions be made?

There were several points that came out of the article that amazed me, two in the same paragraph, which I quote here.

The young congressman [Lyndon Johnson] lost a Senate bid in 1941. Later that year, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor sent the country into World War II, he fulfilled a campaign pledge by joining the Navy. He put Lady Bird in charge of his congressional office, which she managed efficiently. She overcame her shyness to lobby Cabinet members and other Washington officials on behalf of constituents.

Wouldn’t it be nice of all congressmen and women would promise and then keep their promise to enlist in the armed forces if our country goes to war? But, you say, if every congress person did that, we’d have no congress? Ya think? It might have made for a different vote back in 2002 giving the president such quick and unchecked permission to use force against Iraq.

The second point was that she lobbied Cabinet members on behalf of her constituents. Whoa. What a novel idea. When’s the last time your congress person (or spouse of congress person) lobbied the White House on your behalf?

Update: I contributed this same post at BlogHer.org here, which includes a few comments.

Summertime Greenery

Summer time is fun for gardeners. Above you see chives (wonderful for garnishing soups and of course they are great with baked potatoes) and sweet basil (I'm a big pesto fan). Here in Southern California we can grow vegetables and herbs year-round, but summer is when we grow the good stuff: tomatoes, basil, beans, peas, zucchini, and cucumber. I use the Square-Foot Gardening technique by Mel Bartholomew (or the updated one is here). There are differences in the books; some reviewers recommend them both for the most complete reference.

Here's the big picture: you build raised garden boxes (I made mine four feet by six feet out of two-by-twelve redwood boards and lined on the bottom with chicken wire to keep out root-loving gophers). You import nutrient-rich soil and divide the boxes into one-foot squares. How many plants per square depends on the vegetable. Lettuce, basil, chives all are four plants per square. Tomato is one per square. Zucchini requires nine squares (a three-by-three portion of your garden box, as shown above).

Chives have beautiful flowers and buds that give your garden a bit of color.

These tomatoes are getting there. And, here are my pole beans, just beginning their climb to the sky.

Four Corners of Europe

I have to admit that I’m addicted to Google Analytics. No, I don’t check my blog’s stats everyday, but I’ll check the reports every week or so (okay, sometimes every couple of days).

One of the most fascinating reports is the Map Overlay, graphically depicting the sources of your visitors using a dynamic world map. You can zoom in to a particular continent, subcontinent, or country. At any level you can view the city-level source, getting size- and color-coded dots representing the number of visitors. (The real report displays the city name and number of visitors when you hold the cursor over the dot. Here you just see a static screen shot, so you won't get the same dynamic behavior.) Of course, some of these visitors are what I call “accidental” visitors, where the search term they used pinged your site, but it was a false match. It happens. Nevertheless, for the month of June, the four extreme compass points within Europe that visited my site are

North: Rovaniemi* (capital of Lapland, Finland)
South: Athens (Greece)
East: St. Petersburg (Russia)
West: Lisbon (Portugal)

The European city that contributed the most visitors is London. Once you sign up, Google Analytics site provides customized Javascript code you embed in each page you want to track (put it in your blog template and it will show up on each page). You can also add custom code to track when a user clicks a link to go to an external page or to download an mp3 file (for example). And, you can put in a filter to exclude your own clicks from the data collecting. The Analytics site tells you how to do all this and (in my experience) the technical support is good about answering questions.

*Rovaniemi is way up north near the Artic Circle. You can see the midnight sun from June 6 through July 7. What a great way to get a bit of geography knowledge.

Sugar Coating and All

I have to tell you about this kid I saw at the beach the other day. It was one of those perfect summer days—warm, windless, with lazy, rolling surf that cools the skin. Beaches are perfect playgrounds for kids and pockets of children were building sandcastles and chasing each other around in the shallow water.

On this particular afternoon, I was mesmerized by a boy splashing in the sudsy water. He emerges from the soup and with spindly legs exuberantly tromps towards the soft sand; arms flail and water drips. The child scarecrow drops to his knees to pay homage to the warmth and softness that beckons. He flops onto his stomach and chest and dabs his face into the granular pillow. Like a cook carefully breading a chicken breast, he sits up, turns over, and lies back down to coat his backside. A child can lie still for only so long, and soon our sand-child sits up again and proceeds to anoint his head with sand, sprinkling his hair with the beach’s fine-grained sugar.

Most people pull back with disgust and think twice about all that gritty sand invading places where the sun don’t shine. But I see this child, so free and unencumbered. Fully sugarized, the boy jumps up and sprints to the water. He’s obviously delighted with the beach’s contrast of water and sand and begins the dipping and coating process anew.

BREWfest: Music on the USS Midway

Last week’s BREW 2007 Conference was a chance for Paul to give his presentation (Developing C++ Class Libraries with BREW) on Friday to a full house. The conference itself was sponsored by Qualcomm at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego on the harbor.

As one of only two C++ with BREW presentations, Paul received a good response after his talk. He was in his element, sharing his techniques for using C++ effectively with BREW.

The other C++ talk at the BREW Conference was presented by Ted Witkamp from Riffware, an up and coming cell phone product company. Check out Riffware’s new Guitar Tuner product. This cell phone program lets you tune a guitar or musical instrument with your cell phone. That gets my vote for a very cool cell phone application. (Paul will use it to tune his bass and guitar, too.)
Thursday evening was BREWfest, the after-hours party sponsored by Qualcomm. This year it was held aboard the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier. I loved the setting. Being aboard the aircraft carrier provided gorgeous views of San Diego harbor and its downtown skyline.
Besides good food and drinks, attendees were treated to a concert by the Goo Goo Dolls on the flight deck of the Midway. Not being a Goo Goo Dolls aficionado, I must say I nevertheless did recognize some of their songs. Lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist Johnny Rzeznik is an energetic performer. Pretty awesome for a forty-something guy!!

Kellen the Engineer

My father (who was named Graham after his father, who in turn was named Graham after his father, who is the Graham of a previous post) graduated from Georgia Tech and was a helluva ‘n engineer—an aeronautical engineer. He designed airplanes and studied things like stability and control. This was a big departure from the previous Grahams, who were both missionaries and ministers associated with the Northern Presbyterian Church (the Presbyterian Church split over issues of slavery in the 19th century). Graham, my father the engineer, had three sons and five grandsons, none of which were named Graham, but two of the grandsons carry Graham as a middle name, as does one of the sons. And of all those progeny, one of them went into the field of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, which is about as close as you get to my father’s field of study. So it is with particular pride that I watched my son, whose middle name is Graham, participate in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering commencement ceremonies at UCLA. Way to go, Kellen!

Air Temp: Perfect; Water Temp: Trunkable

June Gloom has given way to early summer sun. The Surf Conditions sign at Stone Steps says it all.

Air Temp: Perfect; Water Temp: Trunkable

This translates to 75 degrees F and 68 degrees F, respectively.
The beach day accuterments: chair, towel, fins, body board, and book bag containing this month's Book Club Selection: Isabel Allende's Stories of Eva Luna.

BlogHers Act

Project #1: Choose a global issue—BlogHer’s red-hot issue for the year

Making a difference on a single global issue for the next 12 months

Project #2: Creating an Election ’08 Voter Manifesto

If you could tell the presidential candidates what is most important to you, what are the top four hot button issues you would ask them to address?

Deadline for post: June 15, 2007.

Project #1: Choosing a single global issue is mind-boggling. There are so many. Addressing worldwide poverty, fighting childhood illnesses such as malaria in developing countries, fighting for human rights, or world peace are all worthwhile goals. But I have to say taking care of our planet has got to be the most important issue. If our planet cannot sustain human life then everything else becomes irrelevant. So, do you define this single issue as global warming, pollution control, population control, or environmental protection? I believe global warming is a symptom, and like good medical care, you don’t just address the symptom, but you address the cause of the symptom. Global warming is caused by airborne pollutants, which are caused by various industries from many countries, including the United States and China. Global warming is a big issue, certainly not solvable in a year, but raising awareness of its importance at the global level is an achievable goal. That’s my vote.

Project #2:

1. Foreign Policy. I would like the ’08 candidates to address our foreign policy, specifically in regards to Iraq, but more generally. I would like our nation to return to its legacy foreign policy that eschewed preemptive war and relied on diplomacy to promote democracy and peace. I don’t believe you can gain new friends and allies by engaging in preemptive war. We need to bring our troops home now and end the war in Iraq. “Do as I say and not as I do” may work for an overbearing parent, but it doesn’t work when you try to export democracy. Indeed, exporting democracy is not necessarily the best way to create a peaceful alliance with other countries.


2. Health Care. Our entire medical/pharmaceutical/insurance industry pretends to offer healthcare. But in fact, its number one goal is to make money and usually this happens at the expense of the people the industry purports to serve. As our country ages, this problem will grow. Medical care should be affordable and accessible to all people. Alternative medical arts should be incorporated into traditional medical arts. (As a side issue, our health is also undermined by the powerful food industry that promotes unhealthful food and dietary choices. Effective education can help loose the bonds of the fast food/snack food/hormone and antibiotic laced meat and dairy products.)


3. Education. Public education should be available to all and it should be effective. Limit all class sizes (probably to 20), reduce the importance and number of standardized tests, increase salaries for teachers, reward creative thinking and peer mentoring for students, and help parents become supporters and advocates for their children.


4. Environment. Global warming is a “global” issue, but it needs to be a national issue, a state issue, and a local issue as well. This is an umbrella issue and it needs to include finding alternative energy sources, such as wave power, wind power, and solar power. Our remaining wilderness areas need protection.

Feel free to weigh in by leaving a comment!

BlogHer.org: Where the women bloggers are

Last week (actually 5 days and 8 hours ago, according to my listing) I joined BlogHer.org, an open consortium of women bloggers. Their motto “Where the women bloggers are” embraces the simplicity of their coherence: women blogging. Their membership of more than 11,000 grows each day. I was excited to join since I feel that the organizers are women who take blogging seriously, who write about serious issues but don’t exclude humor, and who are not limited by a political agenda or a woman-only exclusionary feel. Indeed, men are welcomed too. When you join, you can write a description of your blog and categorize it by picking one or more labels that apply to the topics you write about. My blog is sufficiently general that I had to choose multiple categories, such as Entertainment and Books, Health and Wellness, Politics and News, Sports and Fitness, and Travel Blogs.

If you go to any one of the above categories, I guarantee you’ll find a blog that’s interesting, well-written, and worth checking out. On the whole, I have found this organization to include a tremendous number of writers who think, feel, and express themselves with flair.

Here’s my BlogHer description.

If that isn't motivation enough for me to feel excited about joining, the BlogHer group came out last week with an incredible proposal, which they have named BlogHers Act. In their own words:

BlogHers Act will take on two things—

1. Making a difference on a single global cause
2. Identifying the top four issues that women online want the U.S. Presidential candidates to address in order to win our votes in the ‘08 Election.

Until June 15, BlogHers Act is soliciting opinions from their members on what this single global cause should be (global warming, world poverty, the Iraq war?) as well as the top four issues that the U.S. Presidential candidates should address. These are year-long initiatives that member bloggers will help address and act upon. So I have but a few days to weigh in and contribute. After June 15th, they’ll produce a survey based on the submitted ideas and then tally the survey results. The real action will start at their annual BlogHer Conference - '07.

Oh, no! Where did my nook go?

I previously picked this eclectic building for one of Encinitas charming “Nooks and Crannies.” So, here’s another question for you. What do you get when you cross the above nook with this—

Aah, some would say progress; others—loss of character.

Even in death I see a bit of pink paint on the pole. RIP

500 Career Saves for Trevor Hoffman

The Padres beat the Dodgers tonight 5-2 at home, but the story was not the win, it was yet another Trevor Time save. And it wasn’t just another save—it was number 500. Trevor stands alone with the best number of career saves ever. It was a sweet win against the Trolley Dodgers, against whom Trevor has earned 58 of those 500 saves. I only wish I had been there—these pictures are simply captured from my TV.

Congratulations, Trevor. Congratulations, Padres. Barry who?

Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon

I never knew it was so much fun to run a marathon . . . (Actually, I do. I ran the San Francisco Marathon in 1979. I think it was fun. I don’t remember!) My daughter Sara (“Hare”) and her running buddy Patty (“Turtle”) ran the San Diego’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon yesterday and had a fabulous time pounding the pavement. Sara confesses “I don’t think I would have finished without Patty encouraging me,” but you’d never know either one needed a push. I hung out at the finish line so I could see them cross. It’s a feel-good experience watching the runners near the end. Some are in pain, some are exuberant, some are barely lifting that one foot. Couples, friends, and family members hold hands for the last 20 yards. A few sprint, just to show they can.
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon provides live race-day results. I could track Sara’s progress in the morning (10K, half-marathon, and 21-mile splits are reported on the website). I timed my arrival at the finish, navigating traffic, parking issues, and crowds entering the San Diego Marine Corp Training Depot (MCRD) as we all patiently waited in line for individual searches and screening similar to airport security checks.


Congratulations to Sara and Patty (and Taryn and Mary and David and John and . . . ) and all the other finishers who completed the 10th annual Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon.

Is Global Warming a Liberal Cause?

Today I learned about a publishing company that seeks to counter what it sees as a left-leaning bent in children’s books—books that try to teach diversity or global responsibility, for example. The article is a Los Angeles Column One article appearing in today’s paper (Stephanie Simon, Los Angeles Times, Teaching kids right from left, June 1, 2007.) Among other topics, Kids Ahead imprint seeks to publish titles debunking global warming targeting the preteen market. Its parent company, World Ahead Publishing wants to counter The Down-to-Earth Guide To Global Warming which urges youngsters to take action to fight global warming, a Scholastic title due out in September. Brilliant! We can’t have children growing up being sensitive to our environment! Any action that results in government meddling in the lives of free Americans would be harmful to us, according to Eric Jackson, co-founder of World Ahead Publishing.

World Ahead Publishing is the publisher of the dubious and unconvincing title Thank You, President Bush. Check out the Amazon reviews (where reviewers tended to give it either a 5 or a 1—but nothing in between). Publishing that title robs World Ahead Publishing of all credibility. As a serious book, it is an ignoble propaganda tool. As a parody, it is a hilarious depiction of power gone wrong. Fodder for SNL skits. A sad tribute to the worst president ever.

But getting back to global warming: Since when is global warming a liberal cause? Global warming is fact. Perhaps, what to do about it can be viewed as a liberal or conservative cause. If Eric Jackson has his way, we will do nothing until the problem is solved by private enterprise (or we wait until the problem becomes unsolvable). Jackson sees any government involvement as a bad thing. If polar bears become extinct, so be it.