Blue Mesa Lake Trout Management

I found an article in the Gunnison Times that pointed to the information indicated in the article below. This article is on the web site of the Colorado Fish and Game.

Blue Mesa Reservoir Fishery Management 

2012 Update on Blue Mesa Reservoir Activities

---

Since fish stocking began in Blue Mesa Reservoir in 1965, developing the kokanee salmon fishery has been the major priority for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Unfortunately, the introduction of lake trout -- a predator fish -- to the reservoir has taken a devastating toll on the freshwater salmon population. A decade ago, more than 1 million kokanee existed in the reservoir. However, recent survey work by Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists show that the current population estimate is only about 280,000. That's a slight increase from 2011, but far from the number of kokanee needed to maintain a sustainable population.
Fortunately, the salmon egg take in the fall of 2011 set a record: 11 million eggs from kokanee running out of Blue Mesa Reservoir. That amount ensures that it and 26 other reservoirs which rely on stocking will receive an ample supply of salmon fry next spring. The egg take eclipsed the previous mark of 9.2 million eggs harvested in 1993 and more than doubled the 5.4 million eggs taken in 2010.
Despite the good news, much more work needs to be done before agency biologists declare the population of kokanee salmon in the 9,000-acre reservoir recovered.

Management Improves Egg Take
"One good spawning run does not mean we've fixed the problems," said John Alves, senior aquatic biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife's southwest region. "Blue Mesa is critical for our statewide kokanee program and the fishery is out of balance. There is no quick fix."
While Blue Mesa's trophy lake trout often capture headlines, surveys show that more than 80 percent of the reservoir's anglers fish for kokanee, rainbow trout and brown trout.
Every year during fall, kokanee swim 20 miles up the Gunnison and East rivers to the Roaring Judy hatchery where they are spawned. As the state's largest kokanee fishery, Blue Mesa produces more eggs than any other reservoir and on average accounts for 60 percent of the overall egg take in the state.
Alves explained that egg collection is highly variable from year-to-year and from one body of water to another: "There are a multitude of factors that account for egg take; the high number does not mean we have a record number of kokanee." 
Several factors contributed to the record egg production this year. Hatchery staff improved management techniques to assure that more fish make it into the hatchery where spawn is taken. These included: placing a net across the river near the outlet channel at the hatchery to keep fish from swimming past the hatchery; and preventing kokanee from moving out of the spawn-take facility once they've entered the channel.
To further help Blue Mesa's overall kokanee population, biologists have also increased the number of kokanee fry released into the reservoir by about 500,000 for each of the past three years. About 3.4 million fingerlings are released annually, with 3.1 million released into the East River and another 300,000 stocked by truck directly into the reservoir. Biologists have taken steps to make sure that the fingerlings released into the river make it to the reservoir. Screens are placed across irrigation ditches to prevent the small fish from entering those channels where they can't survive.
Kokanee, Lake Trout Harvest Improves
Maintaining Maintaining an outstanding kokanee fishery is the top management objective at the reservoir for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Anglers reported landing about 44,000 kokanee in 2011, more than double 2010's take but significantly less than the 130,000 fish harvested in 2002.
Providing angler opportunity for trophy lake trout is also a management goal. Biologists' fish surveys this year showed that the body condition of lake trout is continuing to improve. More of the fish are round and plump -- as they should be -- instead of long and thin. While lake trout are able to survive on little food they don't gain weight if they face too much competition for food.
"Lake trout anglers don't want to catch skinny fish," Alves said. "Without kokanee, trophy lake trout opportunities will decline. We must maintain a biological balance in the reservoir, increase the number of kokanee and provide opportunities for the greatest number of anglers."
Angler harvest of lake trout is another key to restoring balance to the fishery. Colorado Parks and Wildlife has encouraged harvest of lake trout during the last few years and anglers appear to be taking up the challenge. This year anglers harvested a record 5,670 lake trout, up from 3,849 in 2010 and more than the previous record of 4,664 in 2007. "We really appreciate that anglers are stepping up," he said. "Angler harvest can really help us to maintain a balanced fishery."

Restoring the balance at Blue Mesa will require a long-term, on-going effort.

Balancing the Fishery at Blue Mesa Reservoir

---

Blue Mesa Reservoir is one of the most productive fisheries in Colorado. The water is pristine and the reservoir is the largest in the state at 9,000 surface acres. The No. 1 fishery management priority is kokanee salmon. At an elevation of 7,520 feet, the water in Blue Mesa warms up enough to produce large quantities of zooplankton, which in turn, provide the primary food source for kokanee. The connection of the reservoir to the Gunnison River also provides a unique environment for kokanee to run upstream to spawn at the Roaring Judy Hatchery, where the DOW can collect salmon eggs every fall. Blue Mesa is the primary source for kokanee eggs used for producing salmon for more than 20 reservoirs throughout Colorado.
The reservoir also provides ideal conditions for lake trout and natural reproduction has increased steadily during the last decade. The reservoir is deep --330 feet at the deepest-- so there is plenty of room for the lake trout to descend to cold water during the summer. Shallow areas along the banks are relatively flat in some areas, providing ideal fall spawning beds. Lake trout are predators, and live primarily by eating kokanee salmon and rainbow trout.
A critical factor in understanding the Blue Mesa fishery is that the reservoir is a human-made impoundment. The biology of a reservoir is far different than a natural lake, and managing a fishery in this type of environment is challenging. The fish are not native to the environment and the species did not evolve together. Consequently, the predator-prey relationship is not natural. In Colorado reservoirs some fish can reproduce naturally, others must be stocked, and some species (specifically yellow perch at Blue Mesa) have been introduced illegally.
Balancing the fishery at Blue Mesa Reservoir for the benefit of resident and non-resident anglers is the goal of the Colorado Division of Wildlife. The reservoir is managed first and foremost for kokanee salmon. Blue Mesa is also managed for rainbow and brown trout, and lake trout.  
Removing Lake Trout

---

In many wildlife environments a predator-prey relationship exists; but a balance between the species must be maintained to ensure the survival of both. At Blue Mesa Reservoir, lake trout are consuming significant numbers of kokanee and the predator-prey relationship is dangerously out of balance. Lake trout are also adversely impacting the stocked supply of rainbow trout.
To restore the balance to the fishery in the reservoir, targeted removal of lake trout is part of the fisheries management plan of Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Parks and Wildlife biologists will continue to assess the effects of the removal effort on kokanee and lake trout populations and make management adjustments as needed.
As lake trout grow in size their consumptive demand for prey increases. Fish that are 17 to 30 inches in length can consume 13 pounds or more of kokanee salmon annually. A 40-inch lake trout can eat 50 pounds or more. The removal operations have targeted primarily fish that are 30 inches or smaller, although some fish up to 38 inches are removed.
In 2011, 1,333 lake trout were removed, with 1,298 of those--97 percent--under 30 inches in length. A total of 35 fish that measured from 30 to 38 inches were removed. Five fish that measured more than 38 inches were released back to the reservoir. This level of removal, along with continuing angler harvest, hopefully, will accomplish the objectives of reducing the lake trout population and halting overall population growth.
Biologists from Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Colorado State University are studying survey and catch data to determine future strategies. Close evaluation of the removal program is ongoing.
By removing fish, the predation on kokanee will decline and trophy-sized lake trout that remain will face less competition for their primary food source. Anglers targeting trophy lake trout are primarily searching for fish weighing 25 pounds or more. Fish of that size can only be sustained by assuring that adequate numbers of kokanee exist. At lakes and reservoirs throughout the West, no other prey species has been able to replace kokanee as the forage fish for sustaining trophy lake trout. 
Numerous Western States Face the Same Issue

---

Lake trout predation on kokanee salmon is not a problem exclusive to Colorado. Wildlife agencies in Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, California, Utah and Washington are also working to maintain their kokanee populations.

You can learn about how this issue is affecting all of these western states by reading Introduced Species: Western Lake Trout Woes , published in "Fisheries," the journal of the American Fisheries Society. The paper explains the extensive research on the kokanee-lake trout issue and possible solutions. Economic Impact of Kokanee at Blue Mesa Reservoir

---

All types of fishing at Blue Mesa Reservoir are important to the economy of Gunnison County. But based on years of surveys, kokanee anglers are the most active at the reservoir. In 2004, a study estimated that fishing at Blue Mesa generated an economic impact of about $8 million per year. Of that amount, 80 percent of the spending -- about $6.4 million -- came from kokanee anglers. Kokanee fishing is popular and people from throughout Colorado and the United States travel to Blue Mesa to fish for them. But in the last few years, the number of kokanee anglers has declined substantially.
Beyond the immediate impacts in Gunnison County, kokanee production at the reservoir is critical to sport fishing throughout Colorado. Blue Mesa provides an average of 60 percent of the eggs needed to stock fingerlings in 26 other lakes and reservoirs in the state. The overall annual economic impact of kokanee salmon fishing in Colorado is estimated to be at least $29 million.

Aquatic Sport Species in Blue Mesa Reservoir

---

Kokanee SalmonKokanee salmon were first stocked in Blue Mesa Reservoir in 1965. Even before the reservoir was built, aquatic biologists recognized that it would be an ideal environment for the fresh-water salmon. The water is very clean and produces an abundance of zooplankton which is the primary food sources for kokanee. Kokanee do not compete with native fish, they cannot cross-breed with other spe-cies and they can be released as fingerlings. They live in open wa-ter, so the large size of the reservoir provides excellent habitat. Kokanee also grow to an ideal size for anglers, 15-18 inches, and provide very tasty meat. The location of the reservoir also allowed the CPW to build a highly-efficient and cost-effective kokanee rearing facility at the Roaring Judy hatchery. Eggs hatch in the facility in December, and the young are raised to a length of 2 inches in the hatchery building. In April, they are released directly into a one-half mile long canal which flows into the East River/Gunnison River system. The finger-lings move down the river 21 miles until they arrive at Blue Mesa Reservoir.
After three to four years of living in the reservoir, the fish respond to their natural instincts and make their way back up river seeking the place where they were released. They swim into the fish race-ways just below the hatchery where their spawn is collected. Every year CPW is able to develop a new year-class of fish.
Rainbow troutRainbow trout are the most popular game fish in Colorado. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service annually stocks 120,000 catchable-size (10 inches) rainbows in Blue Mesa. The trout are raised at the federal hatchery in Hotchkiss. Before 2009, fingerling trout were stocked, but they were more vulnerable to lake trout than larger trout. But even the catchable-size trout are no match for lake trout and predation is significant. Some rainbow trout reproduce naturally in several Blue Mesa tributaries, but not in large enough num-bers needed to sustain a sport fishery in the reservoir.
Brown troutBrown trout reproduce naturally in the Gunnison River, the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River and Cebolla Creek. The fish then move into the reservoir as they get older. Their population has held steady and has not been impacted by lake trout. Browns are predators and do eat small kokanee; but their predation effect is insignificant compared with lake trout. Brown trout prefer water near the banks of the reservoir and water depths shallower than 65 feet.
In 2005, anglers caught about 9,800 brown trout that averaged 14.5 inches in length. In 2011, angler catch totaled about 10,000.
Lake troutLake trout -- also known as Mackinaw -- are natives of northern North America. This predator species is the largest trout on the con-tinent and can routinely grow to 25 pounds or more if they have a reliable source of other fish to eat. The largest lake trout taken at Blue Mesa, caught in 2007, weighed 50 pounds. They were first in-troduced to Blue Mesa in 1968. Subsequent stocking occurred in the early 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Lake trout spend most time in open water, the same area favored by kokanee.
At the time the lake trout were introduced it was believed that they would not naturally reproduce in the reservoir. This proved true un-til the early 1990s when water management at Blue Mesa was changed which reduced water level fluctuation in the winter. Conse-quently, shallow areas remain under water throughout the winter, allowing spawn produced by lake trout in the fall to survive. Since then, the species has reproduced naturally, the population has grown significantly and lake trout have become the major predator fish in the reservoir.


Surveying Fish Populations

---

Determining the exact number of fish in any body of water, especially in a reservoir the size of Blue Mesa, is difficult. However, using a variety of methods, aquatic biologists can learn a lot about the status of the populations of various species. These methods have been tested, refined and accepted by the scientific fisheries management community across the United States. Methods include: sonar technology to count open water fish; angler surveys -- also known as creel surveys -- to estimate catch, harvest and fishing pressure; live fish surveys using electro-fishing or net sampling to study body condition, growth, diet and abundance; and by tracking how many fish are stocked in a body of water each year.
These methods have revealed that the kokanee population has dropped significantly during the last 10 years. In 2000, the CPW estimated the Blue Mesa kokanee population at about 1 million. Now, the population is estimated to be only about 290,000 -- despite the stocking of more fish whenever possible. That represents a decline of more than 70 percent.
While the catch of kokanee has dropped substantially, angler surveys show that the catch of lake trout has increased significantly -- an indication that the population is growing fast. In the late 1990s, summer creel surveys showed that anglers caught about 1,700 lake trout per year. In 2011, anglers harvested a record 5,700 lake trout.
The estimated kokanee catch in 2000 was 130,000. Kokanee catch did rebound in 2011 from 2010 lows, but catch of 44,500 was still significantly below previous levels. Creel surveys also show that lake trout predation is taking a large toll on rainbow trout. In 2005, anglers caught about 40,000 rainbows. In 2011, the estimated catch was only 13,100.
Perch, which were introduced illegally to Blue Mesa years ago, are also a prime target for lake trout. In 2005, anglers caught about 8,000 perch. In 2011, catch totaled 1,600. Surveys and creel counts have found that perch are abundant; however, they are of very small size -- most just six inches or less.
The fishery can be restored to a balance at Blue Mesa Reservoir through sound management practices. Anglers can also assist by keeping the lake trout that they catch. The more fish anglers keep the fewer the fish we must remove. The bag limit for lake trout smaller than 38 inches is unlimited. Anglers can keep one lake trout larger than 38 inches. By removing fish, anglers can help to slow the rate of population growth of lake trout and preserve trophy opportunities. Lake trout are tasty and provide healthy and nutritious food.

Pulled Pork slow cooker recipe

Slow Cooking recipes must have a significant amount of "buzz" to equalize the low cooking times and liquid that accumulates from a slow cooking meat dish. The following recipe accomplishes this. Lindsay thinks that the recipe needs more heat in the form of some peppers. Others in my family who do not require an assault to their taste buds prefer a sweeter more barbeque grilled approach to the pulled pork. Sue prefers to have the meat completely broken down so she needs a couple more hours of cooking to accomplish this state. So this is where it begins. It is recommended totally that you modify this recipe to the tastes of your diners.

Pulled Pork- Slow Cooker Style:

4 lbs of pork shoulder (could be in strips)
1 Cup BBQ sauce
1/2 Cup Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 Cup Chicken Broth from a low sodium box
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
1 medium yellow onion chopped in big pieces
1TB mustard
1TBs of Worcester Sauce
1 TB of Chili Powder
2 Cloves of Garlic
1 TBS of dried Thyme

_____________
Cook in Slow Cooker for 6 hours on High

Pull meat out and separate with two forks
Pull liquid out of the cooker and reduce to a syrup if desired.

Shopping with the Sears Catalog

Christmas was somewhat problematic in a teacher household. There were no Christmas bonuses, we lived in a a very modest home in the suburbs of San Francisco. We had our Christmas delights. Most of them were pretty modest by today's standards.  

As kids we had very few objects of desire. Our needs were met at Christmas with the Sears Roebuck catalog. We truly used it as a dream book.

We waited for it to come out with poised anticipation. Each child was able to circle ten things from its pages in hope that Santa would see it and take head. Around each circled item we would put our initals. We never got all that we had circled but a good portion of them. It taught us budgeting in a rather unique way.

I think that it also provided a way for Santa to get what we really wanted without the countless trips to the stores.

It was a different era then. There were no big box discount stores. There were no stores devoted to just "toys". Certainly no black Thursdays or Amazon.

Some gifts come to mind as stellar growing up. 

Parking Garage

One was a gas station that now in retrospect must have required some agony in assembly.  It was a sheet metal garage that had a roll up elevator that took the cars from one level to the other. There was a ramp that had a curve in it that allowed the cars to roll down to the grown level.

Electric Train

One Christmas we went to Colorado in the snow on the train. The Christmas present that year was an electric train set that had a locomotive that spewed out a little smoke... from a pellet.  Grandma and Grandpa had a parlor area that no one used,. The parlor made a perfect train station for me and I configured that electric train in as many configurations as I could think for a kid of that age. I also learned that attention to detail was the only thing that would allow the train to go.  If the train wasn't perfectly aligned on the track there was no way the train would travel.

Slot Car

One Christmas I got a slot car set up.  It was before they called them slot cars.  It needed  a piece of plywood to set it up. It also required a space for a 4x8 piece of playwood, I bugged my dad get the piece of plywood that was required for it.  The slot car track was in the form of a figure 8.  It was great fun as the cars would have to slow down to miss each other where the 8 shape intersected or expect a giant crash. Crashes was more the common mode than caution. Later, when I grew a little older we would go to the sportsman club races on the filled in land in Brisbane and watch a figure 8 races set using real race cars.  The drivers were a little more cautious at the intersection than I was with my toy set still there were crashes.  It think that the demolition derbies grew out of this legit form of racing.

Glove
One year I  lwished  for a leather softball glove. It was a big deal as it cost 3 dollars.  I circled it in the wish book and it came.  It was a thing of true delight. 

Boy Scout Tie Tack

One year my sole delight was a Boy Scout tie tack. We went to church almost every Sunday over the hill at rock a way beach.  I thought that a Boy Scout tie tack with my skinny black tie would be the end all for the Sunday outfit.  I was so happy when it was under the tree. 

My Sisters

My sisters had the usual wishes too. One year, my eldest sister got a Chatty Cathy where you could replace the rugged plastic records in her torso and she would speak in different languages when her string was pulled.  She had jaunty outfits and was a little stiff in the joints.  Doll houses with its scaled down furniture were always in vogue. 

Big Events at Christmas Time

One of our big events was to drive down on the road in front of the Marina in San Francisco and look at all of the fancy homes along the bay that had their Christmas Trees "designed" by decorators.  Appropriately lit, they represented a style that we would never attain.  It some ways we thought it was an enormous waste of money. 

We found a Santa lap to get photos each year. One of them was in Hillsdale shopping center. Dad loved to take photos of us playing around the Bennie Baufano sculptures in the central meeting area.  As I got older this Santa ritual was more of a pain than a seminal event.

As a family and sometimes an extended family we took our turn to walk through the trail that everyone took through the Podesta Baldocchi floral arrangement store at maiden lane at Grant Street and Union Square.  Mom would get to pick her favorite ornament from the trees that adorned the store.  And the smell of that many fresh trees and flowers in the winter time made the trip a wonderful experience. 

We would always get a trip to the big stores in the City.  We would love the dioramas in the windows and the gigantic tree that reached up through multiple stores in the union square department store. It had huge ornaments on it... one year it had a genuine french horn and a tricycle hanging from its branches.  Macy's and the Emporium always were there to compete for our attention. A treat from Blums or Epplers bakery was a special delight.  I still have difficulty turning down a Neapolitan.

It was a different life at Christmas than it is now with our connections enhanced and denigrated by social media, 80 satellite channels and DVDs of all the latest movies.

Challenge for today:  Pull back an old Christmas memory!

Love, Pat    

Christmas Trees from the 60's

My sister has been texting me recently. We were reminding each other in a nostalgic sort of way how during this time of the year Christmas preparations began.

The Tree

Growing up we never had a tree early. There were many reasons for this. Dad's most effective reason was that the tree (natural of course) represented a major fire hazard in the house. They needed to be watered and monitored with regularity. Every year there were reports of houses burning down because of the tree catching fire.

Trees cost less when it got closer to Christmas. Our family was not a family that got Christmas bonuses and saved significantly for the holiday. We had time off but not much money. Teachers even in South San Francisco were not major shoppers during Christmas. Trees in the 60's cost upwards to 20 dollars then. If we waiting until the last week dad could negotiate a half price tree for us. 12 dollars was our upward limit.  Waiting late in the season when the trees were already cut significantly increased their fire hazard which played into the fears of  represented in the first paragraph.

Artificial trees were out of the question. They were very pricy and were not convincing in the 60s. Notable was the arrival of the aluminum tree that was always set up to rotate in the window with a multiple gel colors rotating on it sending the tree to exotic blues to electric reds within a period of just two minutes. And then there were the flocked trees. Don't get me started!

Grandpa, mom's dad would arrive in December with Grandma on the train. The men (sometimes including me) would head down to the industrial part of South San Francisco or cruise the vacant lots that suddenly sprung up as mini forests. Grandpa would look them over after dad had found a few candidates. Negotiations for price would ensue. Some lots would not lower their prices. We got back in the cars and headed to another. A scrawny left over tree was usually our fate. We usually got a fir, as the magnificent blue spruce trees were clearly out of our price range.

One year dad thought that the prices were entirely too high.  He climbed up on the steep 5hill above our house that had the landslide. He thinned out a couple of trees that he thought that he had planted too close together. The were pines. He planted them there so that their roots would hold the soil and protect us from another landslide. They were about 5 feet tall  sticky from head to toe.  After looking them over, he got out his electric drill and sunk some holes in them and screwed lag bolts in the holes to bolster their strength. There was a gigantic hole in the branches where the two trees were joined together.  A casual observer could see the splice. He spent the rest of the season congratulating himself on his cleverness and how the trees were perfect. I bet he would remember today if you asked him about the trees that he put together with his drill.

Grandparents Arrive

December the rain comes to Northern California. Sometimes it rains without letting up for days on end. This rain was also the reminder that Grandma and Grandpa were heading to see us. We often would see them in the summer and help with the peach harvest in their 30 acre orchard in Colorado. December would be their turn to get out of the cold and snow and get on the train, the California Zephyr in Grand Junction and head over the mountains in Utah and Nevada and see all of us in [sunny] California. Its sleek stainless steel cars with the observation domes were the ultimate in cross country travel. We had great times together.

We would often go into the city and go to basketball games together. I was a major fan of the pro team, the San Francisco Saints.  They would perform down at civic center in the city.  Later they would become the Warriors and would move across the bay and play in Oakland.

We would get fresh crabs down by the wharf and have them cracked and cleaned for us.  Mom would make her famous minnestrone soup and we would feast on the famous french bread that made San Francisco famous.

The grandparents would be picked up at the ferry building in the city. We would slip back a couple of days later and pick up their luggage at the same spot. There would be fewer people in the car so that we had room for their enormous steamer trunks they traveled with. Grandma would pack mulitiple pounds of apples in the trunks along with special Christmas presents for the grandchildren.  My sister reminded me that their gifts were often wrapped with multiple layers of white tissue paper with a spritz of glitter thrown in.

Christmas with the Grandparents was always special. Mom missed her parents all the year when we were in California and when they arrived it was always something special for her.

Best Wishes for your Personal Memories this Holiday Season

: ) Pat 

Invictus

After seeing the dramatic movie Invictus, I was intrigued by the parts of the poem that lend the movie its title.

In the movie it is used as an inspiration point to lead people beyond what performance that is logically possible. Mandela was inspired to move the people out of apartheid prejudice and into developing a country the would come together and not seek revenge upon itself. Matt Damon's character used it to challenge his leadership to take a rugby team that had absolutely no chance of winning against a team that was rolling over other throughout the world, and get them to believe that they could win. And they did.

This is a pretty powerful piece of poetry that was used. My web search brought it up so that you may get some inspiration from it if needed.  : ) Pat

Louis Untermeyer, ed. (1885–1977). Modern British Poetry.  1920.

William Ernest Henley. 1849–1903

7. Invictus

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance	5
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,	10
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:	15
I am the captain of my soul.

Our Trademark fog

Tule fog. It comes up from the ground. moisture from the soil chills off in the night and fog forms early in the morning. this morning in November the fog is thick. Yet at 10:00 it retreats up into the sky and looks like the coastal fog. Sometimes, later in the year, in late December and January, the fog comes in early in the evening.  I fully expect that this afternoon will be sunny and in the high sixties or low 70s. This is what a non rainy day looks like in this part of the world.

Its no picnic to be a driver through the fog. This is especially true of the rural roads where it is not uncommon to roll down your window at intersections before pulling out. School buses are now have radar detectors in the country so that movement in the intersection can be noted. Still many accidents occur because people do not slow down or use their head as to when to drive. Speed is deadly in fog. Careful patient drivers are needed to sort out the traffic. Drive carefully!

Passport Panic

Sue and I got our first passports in 2001. We were headed to Italy to see our daughter Linzi who was studying in Florence for her Junior Year in College.

The events of September 11th 2001 were too troubling for her to stay overseas. We still had passports and 500 dollar round trip tickets to Italy so we continued with our plans and had a great time.

Flash forward to this year. Its 2012 our passports had expired. We want to cruise to Hawaii again in January. This will not work without valid passports. Even though Hawaii is indeed one of our states, the rules state that the ship must stop at a non US port before returning to the US. This means that a stop in Ensenada, Mexico is required for a 14 day cruise round trip from Las Angeles.

Our passports had expired last year. So this year in September I started figuring out how to renew our passports.  The government has a a great website for those that meet the easy renewal qualifications. You had to have your booklet, new photos, your check, the form filled out from the computer and 140 dollars to get the renewal book with new numbers and the newest innovation, the passport card. The passport card cannot be used for air travel outside of the US but I figured that it might come in handy as a "leave at the desk" sort of ID that is required in hotels from other countries. It would also facilitate getting another if the booklet were lost or stolen or mutilated.

I dutifully sent off in two separate envelopes the required documentation for both Sue and myself. I loaded each up with a big string of stamps and pitched them into the local post office out slot.

Three weeks later, Sue's passport arrived. In a separate envelop her passport card arrived. Everything was cool. She even got her expired passport returned to her dutifully punched with a hole in it.

The next week I received a form letter with the return of my photos and my application stating that I was not submitting the most current passport I owned and would I please look for and send in the latest passport  with a new form.  No expired passport book arrived, and no return of the check. I really didnt know where to turn to next.  I asked my school teacher buddies over breakfast and they said that even though were were in the midst of an election year, and even though our congressman had resigned, his office still had a local connection and that I should engage them to see what could be done. 

The next week my check was returned to me through one of those letters that the post office sends saying, we are sorry that mail was eaten but here are the contents of the letter that we rescued. I think my bulky passport letter did not hold up in the mail and had sprung apart in the mail its ramparts lining the desk of some person's dead letter file. The sole thread of info that got this returned to me was not the envelope but rather the name and address noted at the top of the check.

So what was I going to do? Was the passport stolen? It already had expired. It certainly was not in my possession to use the easy form again to submit the application through the on line form. In the mean time there was the tick tick tick of the upcoming cruise. They would not let me cruise if i didn't have the passport.

Another week passed as I tried not to think about it. Still something needed to be done to get this to happen.

I went on line and came across A.  Briggs. A. Briggs is a passport facilitation company. You send your stuff to them and they walk it through and answer questions to the people that do the passport work. For large sums of money they can get a passport in 2-4 days. For less money more time. I got started to panic and what they had to say on their website made sense. The situation that I had was a lost or a stolen passport that had expired. Their charge for this is $200. What needed to happen was that you had to present yourself with your paperwork to a local passport collection office, like a post office and they would swear that it was really you applying.  Then they would take over and after you Fed exed the documents, they would look them over, contact you if needed and get you they passports within two weeks, Fed Exed back to you.

So I set about getting the meeting with my local post office administrator. I arrived at the post office with my documentation and there was a note on the door saying that if you wanted a passport conference, you needed to call this number and get an appointment.

I thought... well let see if I can walk into the county courthouse and do it there.  It was where we got the passports the first time.  I was told that they no longer did them and that I would have to go get the post office to do it. 

I went home and called the number.  No luck. No luck for three days in a row. 

So were were again another week closer and still I had no passport.

I check the info from the government website and I noticed that I had to fill out a form and admit that my old expired passport had to be reported as lost or stolen.  They actually wanted to know how it was stolen and what I was doing to secure its recovery. I filled out the the form and noted that the Post office probably had it somewhere between Merced, CA and Philadelphia, PA the center for the Department of State that processes such paperwork along with Homeland Security.

Also included at the website was a little live data base work that allowed you to input your zipcode and would yield a list of places within 50 miles where you could do this passport ID work. I picked up the the first name on the list, presumably the closest, it was the Merced post office. It noted a slightly different number that the one listed on the door. So I gave it a call to make an appointment.  It hooked me up with the post office person in Santa Nella. Santa Nella is a very small town out my Interstate 5, 45 miles away. She gave the real number for the Merced post office. It was the one that I had been calling all along to no avail. This response gave me an idea. Maybe I was trying to be "too convenient for myself. I might have better luck with more rural post office that would have more time to "deal" with my problem.

I gave the post office at Ballico a call.  Ballico is a very small town 14 miles north of here along the route the Santa Fe railroad runs on its way to Modesto and Stockton. It is known locally for its general store a little family run affair that had posted on its outside wall the lettering, Pop's in the cooler, but we aren't sure where mom is. Beside this general store that mostly sells irrigation pipe, is a very small post office with about 150 boxes. 
I called the post master. She answered and asked "When do you want to do it?
I said "I would love to do it today if possible."
She said that she had an opening at 12:30.

I arrived with copies of everything possible. I had the original Colorado birth certificate, my CA drivers license, and a scan of my old passport. She said that she was happy that I was paying her fees and the government fees with a check as she had used her last money order the week before.

By the way, I recommend that you get your passport scanned so that you can have a paper copy of it for future recoveries.  You can save the digital copy on your computer's hard drive.

She looked it all over and had me swear that I wasn't a felon or trying to defraud the fed government. I raised my hand and swore.

I asked for all the copies back and she looked at me rather strangely. She was told that she should keep it all and submit it through her post office and once she had sign it off I was not to get it back. So there goes my Briggs Fed Ex service. The support documents were helpful however.

Two and a half weeks later the passport book arrived at my mailbox, and the next day, the passport card arrived and the birth certificate in a separate envelope. 

I scanned the two passports and added the passport numbers to the required info for the ship. Everything worked out.  We are still 88 days for leaving on the ship. Time to spare!

 

Out of the Loop Except for Facebook

Yes I have read the pamphlet on the sides of the state Propositions. There are many this time as the causes and the so called causes of special interest groups made their way to the November ballot. I was particularly interested in finding out what the teachers and other progressive groups felt regarding the propositions vetted. (I love that new word in our vocabulary). It is a very new word that is meant to mean prepared for, checked out and qualified for our support.

The progressive groups with the most defined positions are the Democratic Party and the CA Labor Federation.  All of the groups seem to share the same positions. Some of the groups did not indicate positions on many of the propositions but consistently they were for prop 30 and against prop 32.

Here is the rundown on each:

• 30 Yes
• 31 No
• 32 No
• 33 No
• 34 Yes
• 35 Yes
• 36 Yes
• 37 Yes
• 38 No
• 39 Yes
• 40 Yes

The first Rain of the Season

We were over in the Bay Area for the first rain of the season in the Central Valley of California.

I knew it rained because when I picked up the paper in my driveway when we got home, it was drenched even through it was wrapped in a plastic sleeve.

I asked my friends at the coffee house what the rain was like. They said it was a very steady gentle rain. It lasted several hours.

These rains are great for everyone but those farmers with cotton still in the field, tomato farmers because it generates mold, and raisin farmers that have grape clusters on the ground. It looked to me like most of this activity was pretty well over. The trees have given up their almonds and the grapes have had a long Hot summer allowing them to turn to raisins. The almond harvest has left a cloud in the valley of its dust that just won't settle. This rain has settled the dust.

Almonds are a major crop. In the 30's through the 70's this area was known for its peach and apricot crops. Huge processing plants were set up in every valley city to can the produce and trucks and trains would haul the cans to warehouses for distribution throughout the country and throughout the year. As prices of labor and water and sewage have gone up, the peaches have been canned in other countries and the canneries have been disassembled for their metal. Almond trees have taken the place of peaches. Almonds do not require cans or distribution. They are an export rather than a product for domestic consumption. The decrease of canned fruit in the american diet can also be noted here. Fresh fruit could be airlifted in from Chile in the winter and Mexico on the shoulders of our fresh harvest. Canned fruit disappeared from our tables.

Almonds are harvested by very low riding tractors with enclosed drivers capsules. The tractors shake the trunk of the trees and all of the nuts fall to the ground. Other vehicles with weird shapes have nylon fingers on them and similar to a weed wacker.  They prowl the rows and line of the nuts and the leaves that have fallen with the nuts in a gigantic row. They scrape along the dirt line as they go and prepare the rows for another machine that scoops of the rows and sends them into 16wheel like trucks with bins on them that take the rows to the nut processors. This year the nut processors could not keep up with the huge piles that were brought to them. All around the nut yards are multiple piles of nut harvest material neatly labels and ready for processing. Many have tarps over them. This is the first year that I remember seeing so many piles of nuts waiting to be harvested. This was often done with the cotton crop as it lies in cased in plastic waiting for "gin" time. They look like big blue caterpillars, in the southern part of the county. Almonds in plies join these caterpillars.

So October is what it is in the Central Valley of California. Cool mornings and warm to hot afternoons. Snow.. once in 8 to 16years and usually in January.

: ) Pat

Thursday Ramble to the Bay

Last Thursday we headed to SF via Berkeley to capture and examine the public murals at Coit Tower and the Chalet Beach house on the great highway beside the beach.

We took off a little later than we planned but arrived in Berkley around 2 pm. A storm was headed into the area and it looked like the valley was going to get more rain than the Bay Area. It had not rained in the valley for four months. This is typical of the Mediterranean climate type that we have in the valley.

We had a lunch/snack at the Cheeseboard in Berkeley. Its a unique sort of pizza place. We had with us, David,   Pronounced...... Da ......Veed. Linzi and Sean's friend from Madrid, Spain. He was sure that he didn't want pizza again. In fact what he really wanted was pasta. No pasta is available at this spot. They only make pizza and one pizza type her day. So the call is... do you want a whole one, a half one or by the piece. They have great salads too. We bought one of them as well.

The pizza for the day was  gorgonzola, pear, and walnut pizza. We ordered a half a pizza for 10 bucks and say down and enjoyed the live music that comes with the ambiance. The quartet was singing jazz/ pop combinations with a little blues..  The drummer, keyboard and bass player snapped out some nice back up to a diminutive a female black singer who was choosing the songs. The sky was dizzly but no rain.

We gathered up the clan and headed over to the city to do coit tower. Sean was still at work and would join us later for dinner.

We found a handicapped spot at Coit tower and the wheelchair entrance. There were just a few tourists there dropped off by their bus. We looked at the frescos and I snapped a bunch of good photos. My intent was to get some idea as to how the people are represented in these murals. I am doing some crowd depiction in my watercolor pursuit. I was particularly interested in how the transitions occur from hair to background on the people depicted.

The Coit tower murals and the Chalet Beach House murals represent life of the working people of the depression/post depression era in the San Francisco area. They were commissioned as part of the WPA. This government stimulus helped keep artists alive by doing pubic works.

While we were their we picked up Heather at her new office area, and she joined our group. With a tourist with us,David, from Madrid,  we had to do Lombard street, the so called crookedest street in the city.  A drive through Golden Gate Park was on the agenda too.  Linzi wanted David to see the buffalo herd. I wanted to get some background shots of the Japanese Tea Garden. I had done a sketch book redenering of a  group of girls dressed in purple dresses. I missed the details on the gate and the prospective of the steps leading up the the gate.  The tea garden was closed on this day as we were kind of late getting there. There were a ton of chair set up in front of the Tea Garden looking like a wedding No people were in the chairs.

We headed back down through the park to eat at Tom Kiang. Tom Kiang is our favorite Dim Sum place. The food is impeccably the right temperature when it is served. The room has table cloths and it is considerably upscale to most restaurants in this genre.

Sean was to pack and meet us there as the younger crowd was headed to San Jose for a big magic tournament. Sean got misdirected on the way from Berkeley to San Francisco. That is pretty easy to do as San Francisco is not an easy city to navigate in a car. He made it and we all had a great meal.

Our overnight was in Milbrae. Its a city on the peninsula, not far from where I grew up. This allowed for us to go take some reference photos of the places that I grew up and went to school.

We then headed south and had a nice chat with my mom and dad that live in Morgan Hill.

It was almost dark when we arrived home. What a nice trip.

Along the way I listened to the San Francisco Giants win their way into the National League Championship Series.

:) Pat 

Finally Fall Weather

Fall weather in the great central valley of California is something special.
Its still a "no coats needed" sort of experience.

Its a kind of weather that some days you want to hang out in the shade and others you want to basque in the bucolically warm sun.

Our city of Merced is an 80,000 plus city surrounded by agriculture fields of almonds,pistachios, dairy, peaches and nectarines. We even have some cotton fields within our city borders.

This year great piles of almonds are gather on the ground and swept into rows and dragged to processing plants. The hulls are whacked off and constitute the vast majority of the tree's product and reason for existence for the year. This year is a another great year. The trees were burdened with branches almost touching the ground. It is the first year that I can remember that there are giant piles of almonds in their hulls neatly labeled and waiting for processing. In most of the years the processing plants have kept up with harvest.

I have been told that there is no fear the price will ravage the farmers because of the quantity. The market place for most of these nuts is not domestic. We export most of these gems to Asia. They are high prized in their consumption. Can you imagine if we got fancy with our Chinese tariffs? Our valley depends on exporting these goods.

Get out there and enjoy some fall if you have any left. The folks in the mountains will not have to water or mow their lawns much longer.  We wait for the first serious rainfall. Here in the valley it may be after Halloween.

: ) Pat  

Modern Speech Writing to a Clear Choice

In the last two weeks we have seen some amazing speech writing and performances by modern political candidates and their staffs.

Its easy to look at what was forgotten. Both conventions missed a classic element in their content. The Republicans forgot to mention the 80,000 men and women at harms way fighting our batles around the world. The Democrats forgot to evoke God in their speeches. Doe it make Republicans less concerned with the military or Democrats God less?  No. Clearly a gotcha moment was shared by both. But now with the quick turnaround with the news cycle, it seems that the focus is on gotcha rather than transparency.

Transparency is the new catch phrases of the era. It reflects are ineptitude in making our points clearly about who we are. Look beyond the rhetoric and see what is behind the organizations.

Its true the parties are on different tracks. The choices of how we get to where will be are clearly defined. Transparency put it that way.  Despite rhetorical devices and beautiful metaphoric images, the message from both conventions is clear.

Presidential candidate Romney is sure that the way to increase jobs is to make business climate ideal for the millionaires that generate job for the country. Supply side, trickle down and less government intervention is the hallmark of his campaign. Reductions in government spending and fraud would be recovered to benefit the wealthy 1 percent that generate new jobs by capitalizing with their businesses.  Military spending would increase because this is were the party thinks that this is where government should exercise its duty. In the campaign they want to eliminate the affordable health care plan. Health care is a major industry and should be protected like a major industry, their losses are their losses and their profits are their profits. Romney is no social conservative so their is no reaching out to the poor or the less fortunate in our society. While he claims he was poor growing up, his sympathy to that is questionable. His claim is that only a true businessman can understand job growth.

Presidential candidate and sitting President Obama has a very different prospective. His agenda is more grass roots. He feels that job growth has to come from the bottom up. Infrastructure and healthcare are his emphasis. His way to grow the economy with job growth comes from people who spend money will generate new jobs. The country will be left with a viable infrastructure. Teachers jobs have been saved through support in people infrastructure. In recent times the Obama presidency lead to investing in the middle class through job support allowed more money to be spent in local facilities. It kept teachers in homes. It supported police officers and firefighters. His plans allowed for major work to be done in our town on roads and bridges and a train overpass. So the economy will begin to grow out of its unemployment by catching up and nation building at home. Its a very different agenda.

Its clear to me that if either candidate gets into office we will need to bring the troops home from Afganistan. We will need to support our growing elderly population, of which I am one. We will need to bring in the rapid cost growth of health care and tuition. We may have to look at what we subsidize in the private sector. Are those subsidies still doing what we wanted them to do. We need to subsidize the programs that help the people that cannot truly afford their lives without it.

Despite all of the hoopla... and I am one to enjoy hoopla, the bottom line of what needs to be done is pretty clear. Congress needs to pitch out its pledges work together with the president and craft a recovery act that will work.

Just my opinion.

Pat

Oliver the Kitten

I have just completed the watercolor book, Oliver the Little Kitten.

I started making from a watercolor notebook that Sue gave me for Christmas. The hand made paper and the the binding were made in India. The paper is so rough and absorbent that making color changes in the watercolor washes was pretty easy and really fun. It was a little more difficult to make scenes that were realistic.  The book by virtue of its media became pretty impressionistic.

What is really fun with this book is that the aspect is pretty extreme about 4  by 9. The 9 inches is the height.

In 51 pages the reader taken  from a decidedly little kitten of about 8 months old to becoming a little more adult at a year and a half.

I have written commentary for the book. It outlines Oliver's favorite activities and how he has integrated into the colony with a couple of human adults and two other male cats.

I have grown as an illustrator in the process of doing this book. Unlike most books that are illustrated after the story is written and the quality of the illustration and the writing are even, this book was made over eight months and there  are some pages that are not very good from the the illustrator's prospective. There are also some pages and illustrations that I am very proud to be the illustrator. 

It was really fun to do a diary of sorts of a nonhuman animal. I also cut my chops on how to do background furniture and day to day situations when painting Oliver in his day to day activities.

I showed the almost completed book. My dad was pleased at the voice I gave the little kitten in the story. 

The illustrative style for this little book is a pen sketch done with a watercolor wash over it. I used .5 lines in the sketches that are made from unipen pens. They are permanent and do not lose their point easily in the illustration.

Most of the pages use a common watercolor palate of yellow ochre, Quin gold and Paynes Gray. Payne's Grey is a combination of lamp black with Ultramarine blue.

Olilver is a tuxedo cat with yellow green eyes.

Each page as been scanned is will soon be sent to my niece and sister who have shown interest in making it into an E-book.

I think that I will take the scans and print the results on a color printer and see if a canvas like paper will work for it.  It might me fun to have as a printed book as well as an E-book.

: ) Pat

1TB The New Floppy

I recently added a new addition to the back up arsenel. Its a 1 Tetra Byte Seagate goflex portable hard drive.

Its about the size of the small external floppy drives that we used to use with computers in the 90's. When macs came out they revolutionized the industry with a hard plastic shuttered floppy made by Sony. Computer enthusiasts would spend hours pushing in the floppy and pulling out the floppy as it wrote to this external disk of 400k. They started out at 10 dollars each. We cheered as the price went down and they became double sided. We even didn't have to turn them over. Imagine that!

Flash to the present. The new floppy is a on TB on a go flex. They sell for about 100 dollars at all the major stores from Target to Best Buy. They do not need a separate power source. They use the the power from the USB port to drive the backup. My what back up. I bought the Seagate version. It is easy to but on your Mac Network and dump off all the data and photos you need. When done, you take the hard drive to the trash. Then unplug it from the USB and store it away. It does not need to be up and running on your network at all times. Pretty cool.

It is true that you really need at least 3 back ups of all your original work. I have two hard drives on my network as well as a personal cloud network away from the usual attachments.

My latest project... well its taken over 8 months.. is a watercolor depiction of our little kitten's life an adjustment to the Merced home. It is painted in an extreme formatted East Indian paper watercolor book of watercolor paper that absorbs watercolor paints like crazy. The current page count  is 47. I think I will ended it at 49 or 50. Each page has been scanned and straightened in photoshop. I am pretty excited that it is almost done.  I think that last page will be a family portrait with Oliver in the middle. He has to share the spotlight with the two other older cats.

This 1 TB portable hard drive is the last piece of mind I have in making sure that the pages of Oliver the Kitten survive. Cammie and Mikie think that it might make a great e-book. 

It seems a little ironic that we were backing up our tiny files that we thought were so precious so many years ago, yet now many people that push so many pixels around the screen fail to back up to a couple of spots. Save those family photos in at least three places.

Take it from one with experience in these matters... hard drives fail. Don't let them be the end of your work!  I am just saying..... : ) Pat

Olympisized

I believe that this is the first Olympics that many people have seen in High Definition. The old TV's have been replaced by the High Definition ones throughout the land. I must admit the once you see them broadcasted this way, you are pretty well hooked. You may be watching sports you really don't care much about.

Its been pretty cool. There is the bright blue of the pool. The opening ceremony with its novel... I mean in both ways display... it designed to tell the story of Great Briton along with highlighting the celebrities and the culture of the country. It had a dramatic understated theme. It was an extravaganza but not in the sense of the in your face China Olympics. Sue was happy to see the Queen at the opening even though her facial expression, or rather lack of it was disconcerting. She was there however along with the current James Bond.

As there are many channels on the Direct TV set up that are affliliated with NBC, the media sponsers of the games, it has been fun searching around and finding that one channel is almost totally devoted the the boxing venue. This afternoon I came across the station where the basketball was alive and well.

My most interesting "finds" have been the whitewater kayak competition and the archery team competition. The women's whitewater competition was dominated by a 44 year old Czech.   It is amazing the venue that was manufactured for the event.The height and depth of the concrete channel with huge artificial boulders added to it and gigantic pumps that recycle the water in ferocious turbulence was pretty exciting to see. I couldn't help but think of the novella Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. The person in the book goes into the Cleveland Wrecking Yard in San Francisco and buys a section of trout stream. Someone was clearly buying sections of whitewater (designing and engineering it) so that this sport could happen at this venue. The coverage of the sport was very exciting.

The archery was a wild team event. The US team had knocked off the favored South Korean team and had only the Italians to beat for the gold medal. Sporting technologically "tricked" out bows the men drew their 50 pound strings and aimed at a target a long distance away. It got down to who could calm their hearts down and gently release the string so that the arrow would pierce the air and hit the target. After doing plenty of archery in my youth it still relied on the release. The winners did not "throw flowers" or jerk the release. The fingers had to release the arrow to its target while the thumb rested up against the checks. The results of the contest whose certainty wavered  throughout proved the Italians had a better team by two points. It was a contest that will never be shown in prime time. It was pretty exciting to a former archer.

The coverage of the sports even with the ability to time shift has resulted in some people running around kind of grumpy. The coverage ends at 1 am each night. There have been dramatic decreases in people out shopping in the stores of Merced when the Olympics are on TV. We have become a nation glued to the TV for some good news. These athletes have a chance to give us this chance. We all know that the good feeling afterwards is temporary ... it still will keep us glued.

Take care and blink those eyes every so often...

: ) Pat

Free Food and Freelander Culture

There is a friend of mind that grew up in a different generation and somehow developed a mind set that if there was anything out there that was free it was his. When people had parties, he would crash the the event so that he could "celebrate" with them and eat the free food. If he was remotely connected he was there bellied up to the table for a portion. When someone had talent, he would be there to use that talent for free of course and when called on it he backed off and claimed it was the person's privilege to comp him with their knowledge. At times it was a a cool ego boost to the person that had talent. I can teach him how to do it... blah blah blah. No, he really didn't want to learn or go through the steps to learn, he wanted your shortcuts and better yet do it for him for free. 

It probably should not be strange to me that when it came to politics, the same thing was true in his philosophy. He did not want the government to do anything except defend him militarily. They should not collect the taxes to pay for schools for his kids or provide for the support of old people through social security. Certainly we don't need to buy health insurance, as a part of the freeloading culture thinks, this is what is coming to me for my awesome contributions to society. I deserve to get this for free and not pay for it.... someone else will cover me.  If you make me pay for what I need, you take away my freeeeeeedom. On the other side this group always wants private enterprise to control the market place.  If you need a surgery... pay for it yourself sucker... or get out of the way.

When it came to software, this person was first in line for a "free" copy of what the rest of the group bought.  When software became expensive and the rest of the group decided to buy it in shares... this person decided not to buy it at all...and then when he had to buy in, it was by goods in trade. When he ate out and it was his turn to pay.. he threw the bills at the cashier as if paying was really not a privilege but a duty.

Then the software companies started making everyone buy a license. The freeloading group stands stuck in time. It costs a lot of money to design tools for computers and the prolific users that work for companies should pay for its use.  There is no free lunch... everyone should have to pay. If you want the latest Adobe Photoshop you can even rent it for 19.95 a month. Why? because the freeloader culture needs to pay its fair share.

It gets down to the lowest level. The waiter the serves you your food. You know there is no living wages coming from the restaurant. Its our duty not to freeload on the cost of service.

Six retired men teachers had breakfast last Thursday morning.  The breakfast that most of us got was 3.99, plus a 1.95 for a beverage.  The waffle house 2 eggs ham, hashbrowns and toast or biscuits and gravy. The tip that was left collectively was 3 dollars in one dollar bills on the table.... I could not believe it. Granted some put their tip on the credit card they used to pay for their breakfast.... but 6 for 3 dollar tip... its part of a culture that doesn't pay any more than they have to... even when it doesn't make sense. We all had separate tags and multiple coffee refills. 

My daughters that have worked in restaurants never let me leave that table with less than 20% tip. I think that is a good starting point.

We as a people need to stop thinking in a free food freeloading mindset. There are really people out there that depend on the little extras that we all can afford. It seems that the people that can least afford it give the most.

Is the freeloader culture the natural progression of what we call youthful entitlement?(by which we all hate).  

From the President

This was reported by Politico as part of the President's speech.
PRESIDENT OBAMA , at a naturalization ceremony for active-duty military members, in the East Room this a.m.: "Looking back, it was an act of extraordinary audacity -- a few dozen delegates, in that hall in Philadelphia, daring to defy the mightiest empire in the world ... Two hundred and thirty-six years later, we marvel at America's story. From a string of 13 colonies to 50 states ... From a fragile experiment in democracy to a beacon of freedom that still lights the world . From a society of farmers and merchants to the largest, most dynamic economy in the world. From a ragtag army of militias and regulars to you -- the finest military that the world has ever known. From a population of some 3 million -- free and slave -- to more than 300 million Americans of every color and every creed."

Happy Birthday USA

Today we celebrate the nation's birthday.

A country that was founded by rich folks that looked after their interests and the interests of the poor.

 The wild eyed dreamers found in compromise a country that was so different from any other in their era that it was worth fighting for. Even now, at its best, it protects individualism and lets the minority voice be heard.

It is not a country that requires membership or support to any particular religion but recognizes the part of religion or lack their of in its citizens.

It is not without fault. It makes mistakes. Just as the people that govern it do as well.

We are proud of our country when it accomplishes great things.  This country moves on it .... it looks forward.  It uses the past as a benchmark, but it moves on.

Some are worried about the loss of manufacturing in this country. They really shouldn't be. I never thought that that in my lifetime that BMW, Korean and Japanese auto plants would be thriving on American soil using American workers.

Some are worried about he education system. Yet every year thousands of students from other countries enter our high schools and colleges to get the education that is denied them in their home country. Why do they do this? Because we have a system that educates them all. Our biggest issue it seems to me is how to utilize their talents after they have finished their American Education.  Our world is going to be better in the next generation because of this. Some leaders of the world have become less scary to us because they have been to the United States for education. Case in point, the new president of Egypt.

Some fear that we have offered too much in entitlements. Yet we will not, as a country, stand by and allow our elderly no support in their last days. Its sad to see that many of the elderly that have a few bucks want to separate themselves from the people that have so little.  The little towns across the United State a filled with elderly that their only self support comes from the property they live on and Social Security, the elderly federal insurance program, which allows them to eat and pay their utility bills. Medicare, the health care portion helps them with their medical needs.  Is this too much? No... I don't so.  Is it too expensive for a country founded by wild eyed idealists?  Nope. When moneyis spent in this country, all near and wide benefit. The dentist bill gets paid. The pharmacist gets paid. There may be even money left over to buy something at the big block store. This supports the people that clerk, stock and manage. Most of it stays home and multiples.   If the money stays in the United States it gets passed around and makes other lives  successful.

Some fear that we overreached our charter by pouring our money and our lives into changing the world in other countries.  Its hard not to think that with all the issues that we have at home that we just cannot afford to be overseas running wars. Can you imagine that if we felt that way about our involvement in World War 1 or World War 2. What would the world look like now? Sometimes we need to take a stand as a country.  We also have to temper this with the threat perceived or otherwise of loss to our country's way of existence. This is one of the reasons we have leaders. They must be free enough to make the right decision. Is the military piece of this conflict so important that I would send my own son or daughter in to protect the life of this country? There are not many that would do so.  My hats are off the conservatives hawks that send their kids to do the war.

Some fear that our judicial system is broken. It is one that requires proof for a conviction. After seeing the tragedy of Amanda Knox in Italy, it is clear that we have a better way. Ignoring major pieces of evidence in this case, the prosecutor was able to convict this American student hearsay.   I really don't think that would have happened here. Our frustration is from the possibility that some are let go because we do not want to convict an innocent person.

Setting our worries and fears aside. we are so fortunate to live in this country. Its a great time to celebrate its strengths and its future.

Best to all... : ) Pat

The Ruling Healthcare for all

In a landmark decision yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate of the Affordable Healthcare Act.
Some comments beware of soapbox stands:

1. Our past employer has put out nearly 10,000 dollar each year for each employee of the district. That doesn't come close to the costs of the insurance that is needed to maintain. The added cost to the employee for total coverage adds another 6 thousand dollars a  year.

2. Many employers and employees do not have a plan that puts that much money into the benefits. Less than that moves people and institutions into the gambling mode. Would  you gamble you life savings and the life savings of your family so that you can pay the health care cost when you need it? This is one of the reasons that employers felt that it was so important for their employees to have good coverage. Sadly some classified people have told be over the years that the main reason that they work for the High School District is so that they can have family healthcare coverage not provided by their spouse that makes more money but whose job does not have family health care benefits. One family member works for the money the other for the benefits. Pretty sad. What is gong on with the freeloader employers that provide good salary but no benefits for their employee and the families. This is what this decision is all about. Those that don't pay should be taxed or added to the pool so that the overall cost is less for those that do pay.

3. Why are these costs so high? The doctors on the TV yesterday were griping about the reimbursement for medicare patients. They were also grousing about the most of serving medi cal patients and that many were leaving the profession early because the costs of running the business was more than the cost of their overhead. 

4. Although 51 percent of those surveyed, said that they did not like the Affordable Health Care Act, 13 percent included in the 31 percent felt that it didn't go far enough and favored a single payer system that would essentially gut the Health insurance Companies.

5. The Supreme Court stated that the Individual Mandate portion of the Affordable Health Care Act constituted a "Tax" and therefore was admissible as valid congressional bill. The interesting thing is that it is a tax to only those that do not have the coverage. Even then the tax would be around a thousand dollars. Compare that to the figures stated above. 

6. The bottom line is that Health Care Coverage has gotten to be a major cost to almost everyone. Without some sort of control of this, it will consume every available dollar that we have in a discretionary way. In some ways it has. The ability to bargain at the table for Cost of Living increases for the last 10 years has been severely thwarted by the shadow of health care costs. The cost of paying premium increases that far exceed other price factors has lead to a pocket inflation that has become onerous. It used to be that much of the raise that people got in public employment could be reported out and buried in the tax friendly health care categories. It was an area that the employee's income was not taxed. It was also a part that didn't come into figuring the retirement fund contribution for the district or the employee.  It was a sweet part of the deal that the workers loved and the employers benefited. And then it grew and grew and grew. It consumed every dollar that could be thrown at it.  Caps sprang up and suddenly the burden was shifted to the employee for the additional cost. 

7. In some senses its not hard to see where the conservatives have seen this cost escalation as a threat to liberty and freedom and the things that our country stands for. Yet, when they need hospitalization for life threatening acute illnesses, its too late to go get some insurance to cover it... in their model. They have not been paying the 16K that the rest of us have been paying do to the losses that the health industry picks up when non payers need help. This also falls on the budget worries of local governments that try to maintain a handle on their county medical costs.

8. So who really benefits from this decision? The 31 million people that will be added to the rolls of the health care insured. The kids that can be maintained on their parent's health plans... which increases the cost of these plans for everyone... just a little since most kids are dramatically less costly than older adults. The people that have chronic health care issues that the insurance companies do not ever want to see on their rolls. Local county support for hospitals should see a decrease in their need to cover the tight wads that didn't want to every pay insurance but were using the emergency rooms as urgent cares.

9. Who loses? The conservative groups that put huge amounts of money into the anti Affordable Health Care movement. I think that Huckabee with his sign my petition adds that streamed throughout the splinter satellite channels for months should be kicking themselves over the loss. One can only guess what major corporations were behind that multimillion dollar campaign that targeted the Obamacare provisions without having anything to support its replacement. Everyone seems to agree, we just cannot continue the way it is in Healthcare.

10. The Affordable Health Care Plan is not perfect. It is a step to moving us toward making health care coverage a right and not a privileged of just the few that can afford it.

Just a few months of not paying for a foreign war would bring this cost into the chump change category. Well someday.

: ) Pat

Losing Our Camera Stores

We have lost our camera stores.

They used to be a ubiquitous part of every shopping mall. They are gone. So what is there instead. There was Circuit City.. gone. I guess that you might say that Best Buy is a camera store. But often the smart assed clerk that thinks that they know more about computers than God is also cruising and "supporting" people the camera section. Don't ask them at what level the point and shoots map... not a clue... but that is probably true of most folks near a camera. Photography has turned digital and because of this, instantaneous an ubiquitous. Its everywhere. Camera phones on cells take great photos. They are even adjustable through apps or stand alone programs. When the photo is taken there is no little economic investment in the produce. Therefore it doesn't have to right each time. Not being right each time means less dependence on photographic advice. And a decrease in photographic sales of film, flashbulbs and paper, projectors and screens. No one has to advise you on how to use your cell phone camera. Billion dollar businesses have sprung up to modify the photos that are taken to make them look like they were done with toy cameras or ancient Instamatic cameras. People are sharing these "shots" in free or low cost web albums in facebook, flickr, and instagram.

Last week I have had some fun using Apple's Aperture Program to make slide shows of the Merced County Fair's demolition derby. If I were to use the old technology, I would be taking the photos with a camera that would produce"slides" that were cut and glued into cardboard frames. A big company would have processed these photos from a tiny metal canister that hopefully I correctly wound loose film from its light tight storage loop back through the pressure plates and back into the canister. I would have bought my camera at a camera store. The processing at a camera store if I expected careful processing. I would have paid extra to have Kodak do the process and it would have taken two weeks to get back the little box that could have been under exposed. In years the color would fade from these slides and they were subject to coffee spills and dirt and abrasion. I would have bought a slide projector to sequence and project the slides on a screen that I bought from a camera store. My friends would gather around on some given night and allow me to show them my latest photographic quest.

Today, all of this is done without the help of Photographic experts. I shot the photos with a camera I bought at Costco without any advice from anyone. I went on line to pick up the fine details of the new camera and how to modify and save the photos I had taken to hard drive connected to my computer. The photos are in formats that the computer and a computer program understands. I can and have changed the color balance, cropped, framed and set to music that was previously stored on my computer. I can share the results in social media and my friends may choose the look at them or not. I can get comments and support from all of my friends that wish to see a few photos. The photos show up on their computer screens or their television screens. I may use the photos to make my own photo book that people that come to my house can look at while I am making dinner.  Or we can sit down together and I can narrate just like we used to do from behind the projector with a wired remote in hand and darkened room. Clearly no camera shop is need to produce these marvels of modern technology.

Still my mom longs for the stack of photos to sift through and sort. She feels that many good photos will never get printed or shared. And that is a loss. 

Her new camera is digital and since she bought it at Costco a hundred free prints were included. She has her stack of photos that was printed from her new camera, but dad likes to goad her as they are not sorted or edited in any way. Its not that far away from the photographer that projected hundreds of his images in a darkened room to a  crowd totally bored to sleep.

At least now the room is not darkened.   :  )  Pat

The Olympic Club Defeats the Equipment

This week the U.S. Olympic Club in San Francisco hosted the U.S. Open.

In recent years, the venues have been structured to allow the advances in golf equipment to dominate scores. Last year at the Congressional, the winning score bested par by 12 strokes. Not so in San Francisco this year.

This hundred year course carved out of a gigantic sand dune extracted its revenge on the tour pros. In my opinion its about time. Even though they fade cut the semi rough around the holes, it was not enough when many shots ended up in the trees and into the 7-8 inch rough. The winner on Sunday will score close to par. That is how it should be. A major tournament is not like just any other stop on the tour. At least 6 months of course preparation goes into the hosting of this event. This is one tough course.

In another sport the same event disparity exists. Baseball home runs in Denver despite its huge middle outfields are frequent. San Francisco sports a "pitchers" park with heavy air and strange right field sight lines. Very few home runs are made.  New parks take on a concept of being hitters parks or pitchers parks. This has not happening  in the world of professional golf. New courses are made to be successes for their members. When the pros hit it.... its mincemeat. It takes an old time golf course to remind the faithful that golf is game of toughness.

A true golf champion will come out of the U.S. Open this year The winner will have to stay concentrated as 35,000 adoring fans will fan across the fog banked hills. They will watch their favorite golf struggle. The golfers will have to use their heads and plan each shot. The holes are terraced and narrow. The greens are hard and tricky. The fairways have always been narrow. The elevation changes are tremendous. Many of  holes are blind. They cannot see from the Tee box where the ball needs to end up. Physically this course is demanding.  It takes it out even the spectator to walk from the bottom of the golf course as it parallels the road that encircles Lake Merced to the club house on top of the hill.

As for Lake Merced, after sailing this wonderful lake for 5 years in our little 14 foot sloop I can tell you first hand that the wind never comes exactly from the same place in any consecutive hour. The golfers will have to figure this wind vulnerability into their game right off.

It is by far the most complicated golf course to have a US Open held in many years. I am happy that it is held there this year. It was the first place that I learned to follow golf. I covered it in 1998 with my friend Tom Olson, and my father, Ken Brown. We had some of the first digital cameras on the course. It is fun to see the coverage and see that the trees have grown and the course is a tough as it was when Jensen won. Tiger was a sensation on the course and in the final rounds failed again.

:) Pat

A No HItter!

Matt Cain of the San Francisco Giants three a no no last night.

As I went about my evening life, I had one eye on the TV. Matt Cain, the main man pitcher for the Giants was running through the order of the Houston Astros in prime shape. There didn't seem to be anyone reaching first base. The score was 10 zip. Half way through the game, things got tense. Not that Houston was going to score a huge number of runs, but rather was he going to make the no hitter stick. Just an errant fly ball dropped by an infielder or a ball that falls in could be the end of the perfect game.

As the innings added up the tension grew. The pitcher and dugout did not reflect the great job being done so as not to influence the chance that the perfect game could be made. The collective heart of the sellout crowd skipped a beat more than once as balls were hit into the outfield and plays were made within the very young infield.

The ninth inning the Houston Astros sent to the plate a Bay area boy to wreck the perfect game. Throughout the plate appearance, the  crowd as on its feet and some said the noise has greater than the final game of the World Series the giants won just two years ago.

The final play of the day was a hot ball sent to the newly acquired third basemen or before coming to the Giants had only played second base just two times before. The ball was hit sharply, and the Arias grabbed the ball deep in the third baseman's infield's place. The batter ran to first and almost beat the throw.

The celebration that ensued will probably keep the Giants from winning the next day. It was the first recorded no hitter in all of the Giant's franchise history.

What a marvel to behold.

: )  Pat