Saint Theresa Catholic Church, Palm Springs, CA

William Cody, Architect

Photo by Rich Seeley

Mountains of Snapshots

I don't take vacation snapshots
with me in the foreground any more.

I take this snapshot of this mountain
and am there as the experiencer of it.

Yosemite in Memory and Reality

For Peggy's birthday, we drove up to Yosemite for the weekend.

We last visited the National Park in March 1976 and had stayed in the Curry tent cabins with the outdoor toilets and showers. We were in our late 20s then.

This time we stayed in a Curry cabin with indoor plumbing, an amenity you care about a lot more when you are in your 60s.

The park is changed some since President Gerald Ford was overseeing the National Park Service.

There are more amenities -- pizza parlors, taco shops, Starbucks knock-offs -- for tourists.

And there are a lot more tourists.

Even in October when the water falls are running dry and Mirror Lake looks like a sand pit.

There are tons of tourists who have flown into Fresno and been bused into the park.

In March 1976, it was too early for the tourist season and you could still have the valley pretty much to yourself.

Ansel Adams, who still lived and walked among us in 1976, used to say he could hike 100 yards off the beaten paths in Yosemite Valley and have perfect solitude for his photography.

Now, Ansel would have to trek a lot further to get away from the Yuppies pushing their baby strollers and their cranky children, screaming and crying so the hike to Mirror Lake now resembles recess at kindergarten.

One guidebook said irritability is a symptom of altitude sickness and there seemed to be a lot of it going around.

Ansel's iconic photographs of Half Dome still inspire amateur photographers to try imitating the master craftsman. (See photo by me above.)

They have digital cameras and equipment Ansel never dreamed of.

But it's not very creative to tread in another artist's footsteps and it is grandiose to believe, as so many still do, that they can equal or surpass Ansel Adams.

And now meadows and lakes that Ansel knew are dying.

Hard driving Yuppies in SUVs ran over 16 bears last year and appeared to be ignoring the Park Service signs warning that "Speed Kills Bears."

The good hearted forest rangers have their hands full trying to keep the hordes of tourists from trampling fragile ecosystems while busily chatting and texting on their iPhones.

"I'm here in Yosemite. It looks just like the pictures."

Oh, Ansel, you were too good.

You made Yosemite a world famous icon.

Now, come the iconoclasts.

Happy Birthday Peggy

love lost and found
every time a rebound
but we never lost us
on and off and off the bus
we were always where we were
lived the Sixties in a blur
we loved cats & one hound
got off on Stones' sound
lost ourselves & disappeared
into the void, very weird
re-found ourselves in '94
gone again and back for more
mattress came with bedding
Harry sang at our wedding
INTJ meets INFP
I mirror you & you mirror me
track's fast, race's won
may you stay forever Jung
Dylan could've said it better
but he lost his Orlon sweater
so happy birthday 2009
true love forever mine

The Desert in Double Digits

You have to live in the desert to appreciate what a relief it is to see that the Weather Channel forecast high today is only 99 F.

Temperatures in the high 90s, which could cause a killer heat wave in Chicago, signal the onset of cooler days in Southern California's Mojave Desert.

Fall brings the return of double-digit days after more than three months of triple digits, including 110 just this past weekend.

Talk about a long hot summer.

The seven-day forecast calls for a high of 88 this coming Sunday.

To put that in perspective, we had nights here in August when the overnight low was in the 80s.

The overnight low tomorrow is supposed to be 62. The fall chill is definitely in the air.

Now, it will be possible to walk around the block without fear of heat stroke.

Smart shoppers in Palm Desert keep coolers in the back of their cars so the meat and milk won't spoil on the drive home. Soon they will be able to store the cooler until next summer.

Pretty soon it will even be possible to buy a candy bar in a store and not have it melt in your hand as you walk out into the parking lot.

When you live through a desert summer, these little gifts of fall mean a lot.

Relatively Cool

Thanks to Herr Prof. Einstein I understand why high temperatures in the 90s feel relatively cool.

Living in the desert we've just been through three months of temperatures with highs every day in the 100s, and sometimes 110s. (This summer gets a gold star however since we didn't get a week with highs in the 120s.)

Monday was the first day where the high was in the 90s and the forecast for today is 97.

If it ever got up to 97 in Santa Monica, they would call in the Red Cross to minister to overheated surfers.

But out here in the Mojave Desert, 97 is reason to celebrate with a walk in the park.

In our case, we got in the old Celica and drove up to Joshua Tree National Park yesterday.



We learned that the Joshua Tree is actually a giant member of the lilly family.

According to local legend, the "tree" got it's name from Mormon missionaries who came to California in the 19th century to bring the Good News to ranchers, miners and the assortment oddballs and misfits, who were the original sinners in the high desert.

The Mormons thought the tree with limbs reaching up to Heaven looked like the Biblical Joshua raising his arms in supplication to God.

Or maybe Joshua had run across and unrepentant highway robber who told him to "stick'em up."

Looking at the Joshua Tree yesterday, I imagined he was saying: "Thank God it's only 96 degrees."

I guess everybody's got their own idea of the Good News.

Cat Ergonomics, Lesson 2

Proper use of computer monitor
as demonstrated by Charly Cat
age 10