…when they take a weekday off work for various and sundry appointments and spend lots of time around the house while you’re trying to work they can be just ever so slightly annoying. For the record, I DO know where the calculator is, NO you do not need an appointment to take the car in for a safety check and no I do NOT want to “come here” to see what the TV chef is making. Harumph.
Apparently I only maintain my G-rating on this blog because I have not yet mentioned the word ‘gay’. Asinine indeed. I know it’s supposed to be fun, but who wrote the parameters for this thing? I’d love to see just which words trigger the NC17 rating. I wonder how the blogs that wrote about this year’s Newberry winner, Higher Power of Lucky, and scrotumgate fared? Because, you know. The word ’scrotum’ is so inappropriate.
My house in California (my only house - I haven’t achieved dual home ownership yet!) is in Placerville, about an hour’s drive from South Lake Tahoe. The area that is burning is one that we’d visit at least a couple of times each summer, with towering pines and that wonderful cool mountain air. It’s also an area that was ripe for a tragedy like this.
Standing dead trees have long been a problem in the area and a source of contention between environmentalists and government.
Since the drought, about 30 percent of the trees in Tahoe Basin’s 200,000 acres of forest are dead, according to the Forest Service …. along with a century-long buildup of downed trees and brush on the forest floor. Fire experts say that amount of fuel is the setting for a catastrophe of rare magnitude, with the entire region vulnerable to a lightning strike, discarded cigarette or wayward equipment spark.
I don’t condone clear cutting, but I’m all for the the careful harvest of standing dead trees. It serves two purposes: creating usable lumber and eliminating fuel for a fire.
When a salvage logging program was recently denied, Guy Pence, Carson District ranger, stood up and told the Douglas County Board of Supervisors: “I want to make sure everybody understands, it will burn.”
The two previous passages were excerpted from an article that was published in 1995, warning of just such a fire (the entire article is posted at SF Gate). It even predicted the location. I have to agree with this blogger: Why didn’t anybody listen?
Remember when I laughed because I wasn’t so swamped? Serves me right. Short article for Islands due next Monday (assigned yesterday - that makes it a one week turnaround!). Game development due tomorrow with a preliminary draft due July 9th for FamilyFun. Final copy for same game due July 16th. Feature article due for Parenting on August 9th. Yikes. I’d best get writing.
You know what will happen now, right? My medieval book will come back in need of final edits. By yesterday.
Does this mean I’m not controversial enough??
Blog nod: Finding Wonderland (NC-17), via A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy (R)
Some of you are familiar with Bruddah Iz - Israel Kamakawiwo’ole - and his now-famous recording of Over the Rainbow. Well his voice is back - posthumously. A new collection of music from the amazing and larger than life Bruddah Iz is being released today in honor of the tenth anniversary of his passing. Entitled “Wonderful World” and brought to you by the folks at the Mountain Apple Company, the new compilation melds the sweet sound of Iz with a full orchestra. Should be interesting, and the video here is worth a watch - if nothing else, to catch a sense of the man and his humor (hang in until the end of the video!).
Every time I see this man perform I cry. For what he was. For what he could have been. And for what the Hawai’ian people have lost.
UPDATE: Have heard several songs from this CD today - at Borders and on the local radio station. The songs are familiar, but beautiful with the newly orchestrated versions.
Please (PLEASE) learn to sit on command so that your owner will stop shouting “sit!” outside my window every morning at 6:30.
I am fortunate to have a job that can be done in pieces and parts, in between the inevitable need my kids have for trivial things like food and clean clothing. I’m also fortunate that my kids are old enough to handle some of their own trivial needs, even if they can’t do it without making an oversized mess. Of course, there was one month when I accepted a project that entailed six hundred years worth of work that was due in say, two weeks. Hence, I could totally relate to this post. And because I am - at least at this moment in time - not completely swamped, I laughed.
Miranda over at Nurtured by Love has a post up about those pesky adolescents. Go see for yourself how Miranda is handling the teenage years. Turns out there’s a book I must add to my wish list.
Last night the kids and I were pondering how to occupy some of our summer days. Knowing that 1) we haven’t done a lot of science-y type things in eons and 2) my kids generally like science-y type things, I suggested tracking down some cool experiments to try.
Number one son – at fourteen – is a tad more particular these days than he normally is. Yes, this sounded good to him, but you know what he really likes? Aerodynamics. And none of that simple Wright Brothers stuff. He wants to learn about the cool stuff – fighter jets and how they work, and did I know that if a fighter jet was even 25 pounds overweight it won’t fly properly? So they shave off millimeters of metal to bring the plane into spec? I am at this point thinking that there is no way I will ever please this child. Aerodynamics? Seriously? The most I’ve ever done with aerodynamics is tossing a banana peel into the compost bin from seven feet away.
Number one son is also easily distracted. Or, what about surf science? At this point I’ve given up on my fun science experiments idea and moved to the computer to start researching. Viola! In a matter of minutes I track down this site from the Exploratorium and then go here.
Soon, number one son is pushing me out of my chair so he can sit down at the computer. And for the next hour he surfed his way around the internet learning to predict high surf, telling me the whole while how cool it was. And this morning he got up and asked if he could check the weather to see if any big waves are coming in.
It’s not exactly what I had in mind, but hey – it works for me! Just so long as it doesn’t require me to get on a surfboard to see just how much he’s learned…
