California Voter Suggestions
Posted: June 4, 2018 Filed under: the California Condition 3 CommentsGovernor:
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!
The Hockney thing at LACMA
Posted: June 2, 2018 Filed under: art history, museum, the California Condition Leave a comment
is cool. Eighty-two portraits in one room, creates a neat effect. Worth a visit if you’re in the area. 
Immeasurable
Posted: March 24, 2018 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
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.”
A Confederate General from Big Sur by Richard Brautigan
Posted: February 18, 2018 Filed under: Steinbeck, the California Condition, writing Leave a comment
It was during the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness. A. P. Hill’s brave but exhausted confederate troops had been hit at daybreak by Union General Hancock’s II Corps of 30,000 men. A. P. Hill’s troops were shattered by the attack and fell back in defeat and confusion along the Orange Plank Road.
Twenty-eight-year-old Colonel William Poague, the South’s fine artillery man, waited with sixteen guns in one of the few clearings in the Wilderness, Widow Tapp’s farm. Colonel Poague had his guns loaded with antipersonnel ammunition and opened fire as soon as A. P. Hill’s men had barely fled the Orange Plank Road.
The Union assault funneled itself right into a vision of scupltured artillery fire, and the Union troops suddenly found pieces of flying marble breaking their centers and breaking their edges. At the instant of contact, history transformed their bodies into statues. They didn’t like it, and the assault began to back up along the Orange Plank Road. What a nice name for a road.
On title alone this book had me. I’d never read Brautigan, cult hero of the age when the Army was giving LSD to draftees. This one came out in 1964.
Most of the book tells the story of the narrator living rough in Big Sur with Lee Mellon, who is convinced he’s descended from a Confederate general.
I met Mellon five years ago in San Francisco. It was spring. He had just “hitch-hiked” up from Big Sur. Along the way a rich queer stopped and picked Lee Mellon up in a sports car. The rich queer offered Lee Mellon ten dollars to commit an act of oral outrage.
Lee Mellon said all right and they stopped at some lonely place where there were trees leading back into the mountains, joining up with a forest way back in there, and then the forest went over the top of the mountains.
“After you,” Lee Mellon said, and they walked back into the trees, the rich queer leading the way. Lee Mellon picked up a rock and bashed the rich queer in the head with it.
At times reading this book felt like talking to a person who is on drugs when you yourself are not on drugs. By the end of this short book it felt little tedious. The semi-jokes seemed more like dodges.
Still, Brautigan has an infectious style.
Mallley says:
Like much of Brautigan’s work, Confederate General belongs, at least partly, to a broad category of American literature – stories dealing with a man going off alone (or two men going off together), away from the complex problems and frustrations of society into a simpler world closer to nature, whether in the woods, in the mountains, on the river, wherever.
For a more satisfying read on men going off away from the complex problems and frustrations of society in the same region, I might recommend:
or
but it’s short and alive. The few short passages about the Civil War were my favorite.
We left with the muscatel and went up to the Ina Coolbrith Park on Vallejo Street. She was a poet contemporary of Mark Twain and Brett Harte during that great San Francisco literary renaissance of the 1860s.
Then Ina Coolbrith was an Oakland librarian for thirty-two years and first delivered books into the hands of the child Jack London. She was born in 1841 and died in 1928: “Loved Laurel-Crowned Poet of California,” and she was the same woman whose husband took a shot at her with a rifle in 1861. He missed.
“Here’s to General Augustus Mellon, Flower of Southern Chivalry and Lion of the Battlefield!” Lee Mellon said, taking the cap off four pounds of muscatel.
We drank the four pounds of muscatel in the Ina Coolbrith Park, looking down Vallejo Street to San Francisco Bay and how the sunny morning was upon it and a barge of railroad cars going across to Marin County.
“What a warrior,” Lee Mellon said, putting the last 1/3 ounce of muscatel, “the corner,” in his mouth.
As for Brautigan:
According to Michael Caines, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, the story that Brautigan left a suicide note that simply read: “Messy, isn’t it?” is apocryphal.
Symbology
Posted: February 16, 2018 Filed under: art history, the California Condition Leave a comment
I’d like to ask Dr. Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of Symbology, about some of the things going on in this local street art.
Empty Bucket Land
Posted: December 13, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition, the world around us Leave a comment
Google satellite views of California landscapes
Posted: December 11, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
are cool.
Lou Harrison’s Centennial
Posted: December 8, 2017 Filed under: advice, music, the California Condition Leave a comment
an email from Redcat informs me that there will be a concert this Saturday as part of the ongoing celebration of Lou Harrison’s centennial.
Out in Joshua Tree there is the Harrison House, a residency and performance space.
Built with straw bale architecture:
from Wiki user Jonathan Cross, “Straw Bale Construction.”
Checked out Lou’s music on Spotify and found it fantastic and soothing and terrific.
Lou Harrison:
Cheers to Lou.
Is it ok to have this calendar up in my office?
Posted: November 20, 2017 Filed under: America Since 1945, surfing, the California Condition Leave a comment
got it for free at Laguna Beach Surf and Sport.
Asked a female colleague her opinion, she didn’t care, but how much can we weigh that? here it is in some more context.
Another surf shop in Laguna is Thalia
Thalia as we all know is the muse of comedy
Thalia by Nattier
Here’s today’s surf report from Thalia via magicseaweed:
Albums
Posted: November 10, 2017 Filed under: music, the California Condition Leave a commentThis album was recorded in Ireland:
from wiki:
Although the band liked the demo, it was difficult for them to record the song. Bassist Adam Clayton said, “At the time it sounded like a foreign language, whereas now we understand how it works”. The arrangement, with two time signature shifts and frequent chord changes, was rehearsed many times, but the group struggled to get a performance they liked. According to co-producer Daniel Lanois, “that was the science project song. I remember having this massive schoolhouse blackboard, as we call them. I was holding a pointer, like a college professor, walking the band through the chord changes like a fucking nerd. It was ridiculous.” Co-producer Brian Eno estimates that half of the album sessions were spent trying to record a suitable version of “Where the Streets Have No Name”. The band worked on a single take for weeks, but as Eno explained, that particular version had a lot of problems with it and the group continued trying to fix it up. Through all of their work, they had gradually replaced each instrument take until nothing remained from the original performance.
So much time had been spent on “screwdriver work” that Eno thought it would be best to start from scratch. His idea was to “stage an accident” and have the song’s tapes erased. He said that this was not to force abandonment of the song, but rather that it would be more effective to start again with a fresh performance. At one point, Eno had the tapes cued up and ready to be recorded over, but this erasure never took place; according to engineer Flood, fellow engineer Pat McCarthy returned to the control room and upon seeing Eno ready to erase the tapes, dropped the tray of tea he was carrying and physically restrained Eno.
This album was recored in Joshua Tree, CA:
Mama Irene Mural
Posted: November 4, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
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
Posted: November 3, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
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:
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:
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.
Trump: Our First Mexican President
Posted: October 26, 2017 Filed under: Mexico, the California Condition, Wonder Trail Leave a commentAn inflammatory clickbait headline but I have a point.
Excerpt from Trump’s presidential announcement speech, as transcribed by Time:
Did he say “they’re rapists” or “their rapists,” as in “they’re bringing crime, their rapists”?
The latter seems to me the kind of way Trump talks. We in the media (everybody) hurt the anti-Trump cause if we do anything that could remotely be considered exaggerating. It’s not necessary, the person who gave this speech obvi shouldn’t be President, whether he said “they’re rapists” or “their rapists.” Why not give him any margin calls to avoid accusations of unfairness?
Whatever — the point is Trump’s candidacy was driven by fear of Mexico / Mexicans, South America and Latin America.
Concern that the Anglo-Protestant tradition of America was about to be overwhelmed or subsumed or at least weakened by a Mexico-Catholic-Hispanic tradition is as old as Anglo-Protestants and Hispanic-Catholics sharing a continent I reckon. It’s a theme in this book, for instance.
My suggestion here is that what could be more Latin American than electing a bullying gangster/businessman who talks like this?:
Trump might build a wall, but Latin American style politics has come to us.
My Chilean buddy mentioned that when he saw Trump at the U. N., he thought, “oh he’s Chavez.”
One of the reasons why Mexico sucks is their presidents have been guys like Trump: nepotistic bully-gangsters who care about nothing but enriching themselves, their family, their idiot sons-in-law, and creating enough chaos and division that the “order” appears necessary.
Pinochet of Chile
Something I tried to get at in my book
is that Los Angeles is at least as much a part of the South American world as it is a part of the Anglo world.
It’s the northernmost city in South America, as much a part of this world:
and this world
as it is of this world
and this world
This doesn’t have to be bad, duh. It’s part of why Los Angeles is one of the most dynamic, exciting, creative, and appealing places in the country. (That along with trans-Pacific partnership, which Trump is also fouling up.)
Trump voters should be less worried about Latin Americans coming here, and more worried about a Latin American-style president.
Worry less about Mexicans, and more a breakdown into Mexican style corruption, disregard for rule of law, one party rule, and a generally more cruel, ugly, hopeless and depressing politics.
Worry less about Mexicans coming here, and more about the United States becoming more like Mexico.
Trump voters should be doing a lotta things different, if you ask me!
Blythe Intaglios
Posted: October 13, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
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.
Waterless Places
Posted: August 30, 2017 Filed under: Christianity, religion, the California Condition Leave a comment
from:
Dorothea Lange
Posted: August 29, 2017 Filed under: photography, the California Condition Leave a comment
Three of the four Arnold children. The oldest boy earned the money to buy his bicycle. Western Washington, Thurston County, Michigan Hill.
Let’s look
Child living in Oklahoma City shack town
at a sample
Cotton picker, southern San Joaquin Valley
of the
Woman in pea picker’s camp. California. “I seen our corn dry up and blow over the fence back there in Oklahoma”
Children of migratory Mexican field workers. The older one helps tie carrots in the field. Coachella Valley, California
Dorothea Lange photos
Pregnant migrant woman living in California squatter camp. Kern County
Japanese mother and daughter, agricultural workers near Guadalupe, California
Mexican girl who picks peas for the eastern market. Imperial Valley, California
Children of migratory workers, hauling water, American River camp, San Joaquin Valley, California
Trouble at the Allah-Las concert !
Posted: August 24, 2017 Filed under: music, the California Condition Leave a comment
In Rotterdam, a concert cancelled after Spanish police warn Dutch police about a possible bomb plot.
I wonder what the terrorists don’t like about this band.
The name?
Colin Drury of The Guardian, Aug. 2016, reports:
They chose to use Allah – Arabic for god – because they wanted something “holy sounding”. But they say they never realised some might interpret it as trivialising or mocking their religious beliefs. “We get emails from Muslims, here in the US and around the world, saying they’re offended, but that absolutely wasn’t our intention,” says Michaud. “We email back and explain why we chose the name and mainly they understand.”
In Turkey, a show got pulled because the promoter didn’t feel comfortable. “But what’s the alternative?” asks Siadatian. “We’ve had the name so long I don’t think we can change it. That wouldn’t work. We don’t dwell. You know, no regrets.”
What the band do regret is the growing gentrification of hometown LA.
I guess if I stand for anything it’s for a band’s right to call themselves whatever, without anybody getting blowed up over it.
Free speech protections do not equal endorsements. But in the civilized world you can call your band whatever you want.
Don’t know much about the band. I like this song Catamaran. Very cool song.
Cube Houses of Rotterdam by wiki user Hanselpedia
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Almond
Posted: August 13, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition, words Leave a comment
Take a break from your work and the stressful news to learn the etymology of the word almond.
Looked it up because I wondered if it might be Arabic. Not so.
From Greek amygdalos, a word of unknown origin, perhaps from Semitic.
Thanks Online Etymology Dictionary.
(From the Who Did This? section of Online Etymology Dictionary’s website:
My political ideas have no future and I keep them to myself unless provoked. They tend toward the -isms that begin with anti-anti- and take root among the kind of people who are steamrolled by developments, murdered by revolutions, and forgotten even in footnotes. I deplore politics based on herd and tribe and demonizing of the other, which means most of it. What else? Dogs and I don’t get along. I’m trying to think of qualities that matter to people’s weighting of integrity. I haven’t watched television since 1994. It might have been ’96. I put ketchup on hot dogs and mustard on french fries. When I played World of Warcraft I found I generally chose a rogue. Human. Female.
And:
Etymonline is a can-opener
Couldn’t agree more.)
The same root word is used to name the amygdala in your brain.
We don’t wade into neuroscience here on Helytimes. Using the brain to study itself feels grotesque. It’s too overwhelming, my brain refuses to learn about itself. (Only just learned there are two amygdala, for instance). And charts like this agitate because I suspect they are probably crazy oversimplifications to the point of being meaningless?
But some interesting bits from the Wiki page on amygdala:
Amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs) of social networks.[59][60] Individuals with larger amygdalae had larger and more complex social networks. They were also better able to make accurate social judgments about other persons’ faces.[61]
And:
There are cases of human patients with focal bilateral amygdala lesions, due to the rare genetic condition Urbach-Wiethe disease.[67][68]
And:
The amygdala appears to play a role in binge drinking, being damaged by repeated episodes of intoxication and withdrawal.[70] Alcoholism is associated with dampened activation in brain networks responsible for emotional processing[clarification needed], including the amygdala.[71]
The story about Obama eating seven almonds a night was so perfect – that is a good number of almonds to eat! Obama’s explanation of it I found illuminating:
“Well, this is an example of the weird way that the press works,” Obama said. “So Michelle and Sam Kass, who was our chef here, one night they were talking about me and teasing me about how disciplined I was, that I didn’t have potato chips or I didn’t have a piece of cake. And this is when Michelle said, ‘Yes, and he just has seven almonds. That’s it.’ To really drive home the point that I needed to loosen up a little bit. And Sam relayed this joke to The New York Times in the article and somehow it was relayed as if I was counting out … the seven almonds.”
source
Almonds. Enjoy them.
Previous Helytimes coverage of almonds.
How big are the UK and Ireland compared to California?
Posted: August 7, 2017 Filed under: Ireland, the California Condition 2 Comments
The UK: 65.64 million people. 93,629 square miles.
California: 39.25 million people. 163,996 square miles.
Ireland: 4.773 million people. 32,595 square miles.
In 1841 the population of Ireland (just counting what’s now the Republic, not the whole island) was 6.53 million.
abandoned house near Killary photoed by Helytimes
Ireland is like a ghost town.
Today’s radical policy suggestion:
Ireland should take in two million refugees. Much as the world once took them in. It’s time to return the favor. Two million refugees would return the nation to pre-1841 population.
Today’s question:
Are there other countries where the population is significantly smaller today than it was around 1840?
(maps via the great site Overlap Maps which is run by Sunflower Education, a publisher of books for homeschoolers)
Old Dale, CA
Posted: August 3, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
The people who populated this remote mining region were tougher than a tortoise shell and twice as dusty. To describe some of these hard scrabble miners as rugged individualists is like describing the Coen brothers as a couple of kids with cameras.
The miners defined the term colorful character, some of whom would made a cholla cactus seem cuddly by comparison.
Little is left but a grave
By April 1896, Dale had two small mills and an arrastra to process ore, a general store, an assayer’s office, a blacksmith shop, a saloon and a house of ill repute.
No structures remain in any of the settlements today. Everything has been salvaged, stolen, vandalized or burned to nothing but ash piles and rusty nails. Roofless adobe walls have melted back into the sands from which they rose.
Blow sand that had covered the arrastra at Old Dale has recently been excavated. Contrary to being pleased by the amateur archeological work, Wharff is wary, concerned that the people who did the digging may return to unearth the stones, looking for any traces of stray gold that may be left below the rock floor of the historical structure.
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