Impressed

via Curbed.  Impressed is such a great word.  “It made an impression.”

In The New York Times, there is a casual distance between story and truth

writer of this article says a number of wrong things, including confusing the 1994 Northridge earthquake for the 1992 Landers earthquake.  Easy to get a fact wrong, I do it every day, but it’s pretty funny to pair it with a cliché about how people in the desert are always making up stuff.

Observations from the Big March

• Many signs called for Abolish ICE.  I myself don’t know enough about ICE and its functions.  Agree I don’t like the vibe at the moment.  Not enthused about letting the current prez start any new forces?  What about “re-vibe ICE”?

• Not a sign guy but if I were maybe I’d go with “return to a loosey-goosy, live and let live style of border enforcement that reflects reality and shared humanity.”

• One of the few speakers I heard most of was from the American Indian Movement.  She focused on the raping and misery aspects of California’s mission history and the history of Los Angeles.  While there’s an important place for that history to be considered, I felt this was a bummer approach, and contrary to the goal of gathering, organizing, mobilizing, and inspiring large numbers of people.  Though I myself had nothing to do with the raping of California’s native people, and retroactively disapprove of it, hard not to feel a little bit judged for enjoying the California which has emerged.  Legislating the crimes of two hundred years ago can be cathartic, but I’m afraid the villains at this point have largely escaped justice.  The goal here is to get a lot of people together and united, right?

• Way too many speakers.  That’s probably a problem as old as public protest.

• Didn’t see Garcetti but watched his speech later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxNl02W6XFQ

Lame. The current Democratic officeholders seem very unsure of where they stand on anything.  Give me confident assurance of anything over hedging and options traders.  Where is LA’s Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez?

Why do we not have an even younger, cooler, and more stylish socialist?  This is LA, baby!

dawg you gotta fix this

• Damn, Maxine Waters:

If you shoot me, you better shoot straight. There’s nothing like a wounded animal,” she said.

• Downtown LA is coming up, but man.  There are not enough shelters and safe spaces for LA’s population of homeless, semi-homeless, and deranged outsiders.  More green parks where a person could get some shade would be a good start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxyt1Vt5ejY

•  One second after I’d been thinking, “smart move to have lots of American flags here,” heard someone loudly say (paraphrase) “uh, the American flag is part of the problem.  Good thing there’s 5,000 of them here!”  Though I’m disgusted at recent desecration of the American flag, I think, more often than not, the American flag has been a positive symbol.

NASA/Charlie Duke. C’mon guys, let’s focus on the positive.

(is the USA the only country where the anthem is a song about how beautiful the flag is?)

Hubbard

The Hubbard Scientific Relief Map of California giving me some insights into our state’s geography, a true passion.

The unusual and dramatic way Mount Shasta shoots up like a pimple. 

The sharp, razorish line of the White Mountains beyond the Sierras. 

And the bowl-like scoop of Saline Valley.

California Voter Suggestions

Governor:

Look, Gavin Newsom and Villaraigosa are both kind of repulsive and uninspiring individuals.  (Savage takedown of Newsom).  Newsom will probably win which sucks.

John Chiang is a nerd who probably won’t win, but far as I can see he’s a man of integrity.  The LA Times main knock on him is that he didn’t suggest easy answers to everything and suggested he might think and reflect before making decisions.

A text from the Newsom campaign cheesed me off:

lol progressive agenda.  Homeboy’s ex wife is a Fox news personality who was almost Trump’s press secretary:

Texting with a friend about why on Earth LA Times endorsed sorry-ass Villaraigosa:

CHIANG for governor.  (There’s like 30 candidates).

I’ll miss Jerry Brown.

SENATE:

source: Nancy Wong on Wiki

At the last second, early voting, I went for Dianne Feinstein.  INSANE that we have an 86 year old Senator, I get primarying Lady D, but Kevin De Leon took money from Cadiz, an evil water company out in the desert that’s trying to drink our national preserve’s milkshake.

Dianne’s career has been at least a little heroic.

Treasurer:

Believe Fiona Ma will join our fine tradition of state treasurers.  Well briefed on this one, plus I’ve followed her on Twitter for awhile and I admire how reasonable and boring she is!

Have we forgotten that boring, calm, careful, honest, reasonable, prudent, balanced, patient, informed, these are qualities we want in our elected officials?

Congress:

very happy with my own congressman Adam Schiff, who believes in holding the executive branch accountable to the people. Seriously, even if you’re into Trump, ask what he’s done for your district.  The answer, spoiler alert, is nothing or worse.  (Have been happy with Schiff since a chipper and bright and positive young man from his office gave me, a constituent with a request, a tour of the Capitol in 2015.  All politics is local.)

For everything else I’m not well informed enough and deferred to LA Times:

though I kind of think it’s a cool move to vote NO on every ballot initiative as a kind of protest.

Hearing some love for Tony Thurmond for the supervisor of instruction.

Ridiculous that we have to vote for judges.  I hope Governor Chiang moves to make this an appointed office.  

Good luck to all the candidates, and I’m open to having my mind changed if you’re knowledgable!

UPDATE: Owen’s take:

A good citizen and a good man.

UPDATE: if I figure out how I will link to Kara Vallow’s thorough guide.  Here she is on the ballot measures:

STATE BALLOT MEASURES  

Before we start with candidates, here’s a quick list on ballot measures.

68:  YES – $4.1 billion in state bonds for a variety of environmental and climate change needs, drought, flood protection, and coastal protection programs/what government is supposed to do.

69:  YES – Ensures certain new transportation revenues – based on a 2017 Jerry Brown law – be dedicated for transportation uses, rather than being diverted elsewhere when other budgetary needs are looking for pots of money.

70:  NO – Republicans dreamed this horrible bullshit up to be able to dictate cap and trade reserve fund uses post 2024.

71:  YES – The most significant measure on the June ballot. This constitutional amendment states that any law enacted by voters through a proposition only takes effect once the final votes are tallied statewide and the election is certified. Some shenanigans – you may remember – have taken place in the past with too-close-to-call races election night.

72:  YES – This is a drought measure that allows you to put a rain capture system on your house without incurring additional taxes when your home is assessed. Duh.

UPDATE: The comments are already lit with takes!

Immeasurable

this lost hiker agreed to pose for a photograph

Geoff Manaugh gets it, writing about a 2010 disappearance in Joshua Tree in the NY Times:

The mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot once observed that the British coastline can never be fully mapped because the more closely you examine it — not just the bays, but the inlets within the bays, and the streams within the inlets — the longer the coast becomes. Although Joshua Tree comprises more than 1,200 square miles of desert with a clear and bounded border, its interior is a constantly changing landscape of hills, canyons, riverbeds, caves and alcoves large enough to hide a human from view. Solid canyon walls reveal themselves, on closer inspection, to be loose agglomerations of huge rocks, hiding crevasses as large as living rooms. The park is, in a sense, immeasurable.

luckily I was able to point him towards home

Love a turning point like this in someone’s life:

Marsland began drinking less, losing nearly 40 pounds as he reoriented his free time around this quest to find a stranger. “I crossed the line from being somebody who just sat in his room and passively participated in something to being actively involved,” he said. “It was a big moment for me, and it led to a lot of other good things happening in my life.”

Google satellite views of California landscapes

are cool.

Mama Irene Mural

The street art in my neighborhood is good.

There’s always something wild at the Taschen store.

This one I walk by all the time, and I got to wondering, who is Mama Irene?

Some local Latina community leader?  Is she wearing gardening clothes?  A pioneering urban farmer?

Seen here with my colleague Ted for scale:

Turns out, this is the mother of EDM impresario and Electric Daisy Carnival founder Pasquale Rotella:

from EDM.com

The mural was unveiled after Mama Irene’s funeral at nearby Hollywood Forever cemetery.  It was commissioned by Kaskade.

Raddon is married and has three children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.^[30]

Mystery of the Joshua Tree Missing Hikers

Early on Thursday, July 27, these two people entered Joshua Tree National Park.

At 4:50 pm that day, there was a ping from the guy’s cell phone that put them in the park.

That was a darn hot day in the park:

source

On Friday, July 28, says The Hi Desert Star, the person who took care of the Air BnB where they were supposed to be checked out found their stuff.  So they started a search.

Their car was found near the Maze Loop trailhead, one of the closest trails to the West Entrance of the park:

With terrain:

Satellite:

Here it is on Tom Harrison’s map:

For perspective, here is the whole park, which is, in our nation’s tiredest comparison, almost as big as Rhode Island:

All the more tragic to think these folks weren’t too far from a road.  The Maze Loop looks like this:

It’s trippy and weird and spooky and cool:

The trail is pretty well marked but it’s easy to get lost if it’s a hundred degrees and you’re out of water.

All day that Saturday, July 29, there were helicopters over the park.

Walking along the northern edge of the park that evening I ran into a search and rescue team, who told me the troubling tale of the missing hikers. They had crossed up from the trailhead looking for these folks.  They’d found a water bottle, weren’t sure it was related.

There was strange weather in the desert around this time.  On Sunday July 30 a monsoon blew through:

An interesting detail that emerged, again from the Hi Desert Star, that the young man had been out to the park a few weeks before, on “a scouting trip,” with a friend who could now not be found because he was in Japan.

“Interesting,” I thought.

Perhaps someday they would be found alive like this lost couple.

Time passed.

The search was downgraded from “search and rescue” to “search and recovery.”

But the persistent searchers, including the missing man’s father, kept at it.

On Sunday, Oct. 15:

The cause of death was a twist: gunshot wounds.

A curious case.

The absolute source I would want to get on this story would be Desert Oracle, and wouldn’t you know it, Desert Oracle radio came in with a strong take.  Let me encourage you to listen to Desert Oracle, Episode 12, to which I award a spontaneous Helytimes Prize for Best Podcast Episode, California Division, 2017.

You can subscribe to Desert Oracle print quarterly here, and at $25, you’re crazy not to.

Blythe Intaglios

Way out near the border to Arizona are the Blythe Intaglios, California’s answer to the Nazca lines.

You can see them easily on Google Maps.

Intaglio comes from an Italian word: to engrave.

What was the point of these things?

Some researchers hypothesize that the intaglios are stopping points on a keruk pilgrimage or simply the practice of the keruk ceremony at various places.^[13] The keruk was a mourning ceremony that was practiced by various Native Americans in southern California. The keruk included the reenactment of the creator’s death and the recognition of the people who had died since the last keruk. Warfare has been offered a possible explanation as to the spread along the Colorado River of ceremonies such as the keruk and the similar style of desert intaglios.^[13]

They were first “discovered” by pilots in the ’30s.

I keep meaning to go out there and have a look but it’s like four hours away.