A discovery of 2011, by way of Thom Brekke: The Beachcomber, a motel in Fort Bragg. Here’s what you see right out the back of the place, which is built adjacent to an old logging road (and before that, a rail line) used to carry logs to the Fort Bragg mills. The mills are gone, but the road persists as a trail that runs from the motel, on the north bank of Pudding Creek, for seven miles or so up the coast. Along the way, there’s lots of beach and bluff frontage. It’s an amazing place, really.
Road Blog: Mendocino Vineyard
Back home in Berkeley tonight. But at noontime today, we stopped on our way south at Toulouse, a vineyard and winery along Highway 128 in Mendocino County. We went into the tasting room and bought some wine, then walked up through the vineyards briefly. One bird note: We see robins down here, of course. They’re everywhere, right? But up at Toulouse today, their presence was a little more than we see around the city. hundreds if not thousands of robins filled trees around the harvested vineyards. Checking one Mendocino birding site, the county seems to be a major wintering locale for American robins (Turdus migratorius; yes, “Turdus”; it’s Latin for “thrush”; you know there’s a whole story about why it’s called “robin,” but some of us can’t stay up all night to tell it).
A general explanation for the robin swarm around the vineyards comes from Cornell’s Birds of North America: “The diet of the robin is … highly variable, changing from primarily soft invertebrates, especially earthworms, in spring and summer, to primarily fruit in autumn and winter. During the nonbreeding season, large flocks of hundreds or thousands of immature and adult birds migrate to lower elevations and latitudes, where they form roosting aggregations from which they track sources of berries.” Cornell also notes that the robin is a relatively recent arrival in much of California west of the Sierra foothills, not pushing into other parts of the state until irrigation and well-watered lawns (and thus a richer supply of earthworms near the surface) made it possible for the bird to extend its range. And one more note from that Mendocino County site: robins (and some other abundant songbirds) are favored prey of some raptors (peregrine falcons and sharp-shinned hawks, among others).
The sound of the birds near the vineyard was remarkable enough I recorded some audio and will try to post that later.
Road Blog: Mendocino Vineyard
Back home in Berkeley tonight. But at noontime today, we stopped on our way south at Toulouse, a vineyard and winery along Highway 128 in Mendocino County. We went into the tasting room and bought some wine, then walked up through the vineyards briefly. One bird note: We see robins down here, of course. They’re everywhere, right? But up at Toulouse today, their presence was a little more than we see around the city. hundreds if not thousands of robins filled trees around the harvested vineyards. Checking one Mendocino birding site, the county seems to be a major wintering locale for American robins (Turdus migratorius; yes, “Turdus”; it’s Latin for “thrush”; you know there’s a whole story about why it’s called “robin,” but some of us can’t stay up all night to tell it).
A general explanation for the robin swarm around the vineyards comes from Cornell’s Birds of North America: “The diet of the robin is … highly variable, changing from primarily soft invertebrates, especially earthworms, in spring and summer, to primarily fruit in autumn and winter. During the nonbreeding season, large flocks of hundreds or thousands of immature and adult birds migrate to lower elevations and latitudes, where they form roosting aggregations from which they track sources of berries.” Cornell also notes that the robin is a relatively recent arrival in much of California west of the Sierra foothills, not pushing into other parts of the state until irrigation and well-watered lawns (and thus a richer supply of earthworms near the surface) made it possible for the bird to extend its range. And one more note from that Mendocino County site: robins (and some other abundant songbirds) are favored prey of some raptors (peregrine falcons and sharp-shinned hawks, among others).
The sound of the birds near the vineyard was remarkable enough I recorded some audio and will try to post that later.
Road Blog: Fort Bragg Xmas Extravaganza
We drove up to Fort Bragg with a plan of driving someplace in the interior of the county–Montgomery Redwoods State Reserve, near Comptche in the back of beyond, was one candidate. But in the full light of day and looking out at the coast right outside our window, it seemed to make a lot more sense to just hang here. So we went for a long walk up a coastal trail to MacKerricher State Park north of town, then back. The Dog, for one, was delighted. Then we went and had a bowl of clam chowder down by the Noyo River harbor. We started back to town, then Kate remembered a plaque about the local salmon fishery she wanted to show me. The plaque was on the outside wall of a restaurant at the harbor. When we pulled into the parking lot, there was a pickup truck parked there towing a dory festooned with Christmas lights. A woman wearing a Santa hat was standing next to it. “Making your rounds?” I said. “Yeah, I start early,” she said. Then she told me that the boat was decked out for the town’s annual Christmas parade, starring local working vehicles like logging trucks and yes, a few boats. “Seven o’clock. You should come out. It’s a big deal for our little town,” she said, adding that it has been going on for something like 75 years. So after going back to our room, taking a nap, watching part of the Wisconsin-Michigan State game, we walked across the pedestrian trestle from our motel into town and found the parade. The vessel pictured (at the corner of North Main Street and East Redwood Avenue) is the one we saw down by the harbor.
Road Blog: Asti
Headed north on U.S. 101 for a couple days in Mendocino County, I pulled off at Asti, just south of Cloverdale. The wine valleys are full of fall color. Today’s bonus: Despite my earlier post on drought anxiety, it must be said that today was incredible. In the mid-70s in Berkeley and everywhere else around the Bay Area; new records were set in San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Rosa. Up here, on the coast, it’s supposed to get down to the mid-30s tonight.
It’s December. Do You Know Where Your Rain Is?
It’s December now in the Bay Area, and if you’re fastidious about your weather expectations, you look out the window and want to see rain. Or at least a little gray. But in the wake of the little wind event of the past couple of days, what I see out there is a sparkling azure sky without a hint of a cloud.
Our climate is mostly dry from sometime in April to sometime in October, mostly wet from October to April, except when it’s not. And when it’s not, we’ve got trouble. Yes, things in the cities are beautiful, and when you turn on the spigot, water from somewhere magically appears. But you know that somewhere–up in the Sierra, out in the Valley–things aren’t so good. There won’t be enough mountain snow to help replenish the reservoirs in the spring. The farmers will want water they cannot get. The fish and wildlife that depend on an abundant flow of water through the Delta, species threatened because for decades they were last in line when people thought about how to spend the water we bank, will suffer. The edge to the anxiety comes from the knowledge that drought happens here, and drought can become a social and political as well as a natural and environmental mess.
Feeling nervous yet? I am. I follow Jan Null, a Bay Area meteorologist. Here’s his climate summary for last month:
November 2011 was a cool and mostly dry month across California. Monthly average maxima anomalies were -1.0 (San Jose) to -3.6 degrees (Los Angeles), while monthly mean anomalies were -0.8 to -2.3 degrees. North of the Tehachapis rainfall was well below normal ranging from 28% of normal (Sacramento) to 69% (Eureka) while Southern California was quite wet with Los Angeles and San Diego at 152% and 309% of normal respectively.
Sometimes, to reassure myself that all will soon be well, I might take a spin through weather and climate sites to see what the professionals are saying about the forecast. That image to the right is a graphic of the Quantitative Precipitation Forecast from the California Nevada River Forecast Center. During a wet period, the map will be a glorious swirl of color–blue and green and yellow, depicting progressively heavier precipitation, and sometimes orange and splashes of red and magenta when it’s really wet (there’s a scale at the top of the map; click on the image for a full-size version). Gray, on the other hand, means dry. No rain in the lowlands. No snow in the uplands. No reassurance.
Next, here’s how one of the meteorologists down in the Bay Area National Weather Service office in Monterey sums up the coming week in the Area Forecast Discussion (using familiar all-caps weather advisory style):
DRY WEATHER LOOKS TO BE IN STORE FOR THE DISTRICT SUNDAY THOUGH NEXT WEEK. HOWEVER…THE MODELS ARE STARTING TO SHOW SOME DIFFERENCES. THE ECMWF KEEPS A STRONG RIDGE ALONG 135W STRETCHING INTO THE GULF OF ALASKA WITH A STRONG SHORTWAVE DIVING DOWN THROUGH THE GREAT BASIN LATE THURSDAY INTO FRIDAY. THIS SCENARIO WOULD BRING ANOTHER BOUT OF GUSTY OFFSHORE WINDS. THE GFS WEAKENS AND FLATTENS THE RIDGE BY THE END OF NEXT WEEK…WITH A SHORTWAVE MOVING INTO THE NORTHERN PLAINS NOT DIVING SHARPLY SOUTHEAST. THIS WOULD NOT BE A WINDY SCENARIO FOR THE DISTRICT. REGARDLESS OF THE MODEL…DRY WEATHER IS IN STORE THROUGH THE END OF THE NEXT WORKWEEK.
Got that? The major question the weather persons are dealing with is whether or not the forecast models indicate another windstorm for the coming week. Chances of rain–none apparent.
The pluviophile now turns eyes to the coming month, even though we’re exiting the realm of forecasting and prediction and entering into one of probabilities and outlooks. But here goes: The National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center says the Bay Area should have “near median” precipitation in the period from eight to 14 days from now (median in this case meaning rainfall along the lines of the “middle 10 years” of the past three decades in terms of rainfall); the northern quarter of California is looking at below-median rainfall during that period. The center’s one-month outlook shows equal chances of above, below, or near median precipitation. That’s because “there were no strong and consistent climate signals” among the forecast models.
And one last stop: Both the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor report and the seasonal outlook, through the end of February, show California drought-free (things look scary in Texas, though).
So where’s the rain? Like that TV show used to say: Out there. Somewhere.
Family History Files: Tim Hogan
A long-ago teacher of mine–G.E. Smith, who taught English, literature, and a lot more at Crete-Monee High School in the 1960s and '70s–became interested in his family ancestry late in life. It wasn't an easy thing. I don't know a lot of his personal story, but I do know that his mother left his biological father very early in his life, back in the mid-'20s, and that he was raised by a stepfather he remembered as generous if not saintly.
Also late in life, he brought out a book of poems he had written as a much younger man. He hadn't intended to, he said, but when he started into the family history business, his work took on a different meaning: "It wasn't until I began to think, as a genealogist, about how anything written by ancient relatives–even in signature–was (or could have been) so extraordinarily precious that I decided to consider publishing. I realized that I, too, someday, would likely be a long-ago ancient relative to someone who was pursuing my family history."
That line about the actual words of a forebear being "so extraordinarily precious" stuck in my head. I've listened to perhaps hundreds of hours of stories about my dad's family and my mom's, and recently I was struck with a little sense of urgency about setting down at least the basic outlines of what I've heard. So far, that's mostly involved cemetery visits and creating the beginnings of a family tree (through the very expensive and sometimes-worth-it Ancestry.com). There's a bit of an addictive thrill in tracking down someone you've been hearing about your whole life in a century-old census record: Wow–there they are, just like Mom and Dad said, in Warren, Minnesota, or on South Yale Avenue in Chicago. But records only take you so far, and they don't really give a voice to the people listed on the census rolls or on the draft records or on Ellis Island arrival manifests.
I imagine my family is like most in that whatever words were ever written down have mostly fallen victim to fastidious housecleaning, negligence, dismissiveness, or lack of interest. You know: "Who'd ever be interested in that?" or, "Does anyone want this old stuff?" (I think pictures are the occasional exception to this rule. Plenty get thrown away, but the images have an intrinsic interest for a lot of people when they can't readily identify the subjects of the photos.) Chance, mostly, and, less often, selection determine what survives. My dad has a collection of letters his father wrote to his mother during their courtship and early in their marriage, a century and more ago. I believe they are numbered and I remember hearing that after my grandfather, Sjur Brekke, died, in their 26th year of marriage, my grandmother continued to read those letters for years afterward. There used to be another set of letters, too–my grandmother's letters to my grandfather. But at some point she destroyed them. The story I've heard is that she considered them too personal for others to read. Wouldn't we Brekke descendants love to get a look at those.
Over to my mom's side of the family: They were Irish and stereotypically more voluble than my dad's Norwegian clan. But not much has survived (that I know about) beyond the oral tradition. One rather amazing exception: my mom's grandfather.
I don't know a lot about him, but Timothy Jeremiah Hogan was born in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1864 (I'll let him tell that story), lived as a child on the Great Plains (ditto), raised a family, including my grandfather Edward Hogan, in central and northern Illinois. He was a railroad man, working for one of the roads back there (on the Wabash, I believe, but don't know for sure). He was said to have spent a lot of time riding alone in the caboose and taught himself to play the guitar. He was losing his hearing at the end of his life, was described as taciturn and short with most of his grandchildren, and was reportedly heartbroken when a favorite grandson drowned in the summer of 1939. He died himself a month later.
Another thing about Tim Hogan: He had a typewriter, and he used it. He composed poems on the typewriter, and song lyrics. Here's one of his poems, about two of my mom's brothers (that's them in the picture at right) shortly after their first birthday:
October 7th.1934.
AN ODE TO OUR LITTLE
TWIN BOYS TOM, AND ED
*********************
Early in the morning
When they open up their eyes
Laying in their tiney little beds
Rolling over, over
Both the same size
Cunning little round bald heads.
You couldent help but love them
With their smileing eyes of blue
Remember it was GRAND DAD told you so,
Charming little twinners,
Only new beginers
You can almost see them grow.
Tim wrote letters, too. We only have a handful of them, but below are a couple that he produced in 1936 when he was trying to do a little biographical/genealogical research of his own. The first (click pages for larger images; full text is after the jump) is to the clerk of LaSalle County, and he's hoping to find records of his family's residence from around the time of his birth.
The second letter is to the Railroad Retirement Board. He doesn't explicitly mention it here, but I recall a couple of my mom's aunts, Tim's daughters Catherine and Betty, saying he was trying to establish his date of birth in relation to a pension that might be due.
One question I have about these: Did he send them? As he says, he's earnestly interested in getting answers. So my guess is that these are copies of versions he sent. I haven't found any records in the sparse collection of family documents to suggest what answers he might have gotten. The full text of the letters is available through the link below. If the lines break in an odd way, it's because I tried to stick to how he broke the lines, starting nearly each new line with a capital letter. I've also tried to copy his punctuation and spelling.
Family History Files: Tim Hogan
A long-ago teacher of mine–G.E. Smith, who taught English, literature, and a lot more at Crete-Monee High School in the 1960s and '70s–became interested in his family ancestry late in life. It wasn't an easy thing. I don't know a lot of his personal story, but I do know that his mother left his biological father very early in his life, back in the mid-'20s, and that he was raised by a stepfather he remembered as generous if not saintly.
Also late in life, he brought out a book of poems he had written as a much younger man. He hadn't intended to, he said, but when he started into the family history business, his work took on a different meaning: "It wasn't until I began to think, as a genealogist, about how anything written by ancient relatives–even in signature–was (or could have been) so extraordinarily precious that I decided to consider publishing. I realized that I, too, someday, would likely be a long-ago ancient relative to someone who was pursuing my family history."
That line about the actual words of a forebear being "so extraordinarily precious" stuck in my head. I've listened to perhaps hundreds of hours of stories about my dad's family and my mom's, and recently I was struck with a little sense of urgency about setting down at least the basic outlines of what I've heard. So far, that's mostly involved cemetery visits and creating the beginnings of a family tree (through the very expensive and sometimes-worth-it Ancestry.com). There's a bit of an addictive thrill in tracking down someone you've been hearing about your whole life in a century-old census record: Wow–there they are, just like Mom and Dad said, in Warren, Minnesota, or on South Yale Avenue in Chicago. But records only take you so far, and they don't really give a voice to the people listed on the census rolls or on the draft records or on Ellis Island arrival manifests.
I imagine my family is like most in that whatever words were ever written down have mostly fallen victim to fastidious housecleaning, negligence, dismissiveness, or lack of interest. You know: "Who'd ever be interested in that?" or, "Does anyone want this old stuff?" (I think pictures are the occasional exception to this rule. Plenty get thrown away, but the images have an intrinsic interest for a lot of people when they can't readily identify the subjects of the photos.) Chance, mostly, and, less often, selection determine what survives. My dad has a collection of letters his father wrote to his mother during their courtship and early in their marriage, a century and more ago. I believe they are numbered and I remember hearing that after my grandfather, Sjur Brekke, died, in their 26th year of marriage, my grandmother continued to read those letters for years afterward. There used to be another set of letters, too–my grandmother's letters to my grandfather. But at some point she destroyed them. The story I've heard is that she considered them too personal for others to read. Wouldn't we Brekke descendants love to get a look at those.
Over to my mom's side of the family: They were Irish and stereotypically more voluble than my dad's Norwegian clan. But not much has survived (that I know about) beyond the oral tradition. One rather amazing exception: my mom's grandfather.
I don't know a lot about him, but Timothy Jeremiah Hogan was born in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1864 (I'll let him tell that story), lived as a child on the Great Plains (ditto), raised a family, including my grandfather Edward Hogan, in central and northern Illinois. He was a railroad man, working for one of the roads back there (on the Wabash, I believe, but don't know for sure). He was said to have spent a lot of time riding alone in the caboose and taught himself to play the guitar. He was losing his hearing at the end of his life, was described as taciturn and short with most of his grandchildren, and was reportedly heartbroken when a favorite grandson drowned in the summer of 1939. He died himself a month later.
Another thing about Tim Hogan: He had a typewriter, and he used it. He composed poems on the typewriter, and song lyrics. Here's one of his poems, about two of my mom's brothers (that's them in the picture at right) shortly after their first birthday:
October 7th.1934.
AN ODE TO OUR LITTLE
TWIN BOYS TOM, AND ED
*********************
Early in the morning
When they open up their eyes
Laying in their tiney little beds
Rolling over, over
Both the same size
Cunning little round bald heads.
You couldent help but love them
With their smileing eyes of blue
Remember it was GRAND DAD told you so,
Charming little twinners,
Only new beginers
You can almost see them grow.
Tim wrote letters, too. We only have a handful of them, but below are a couple that he produced in 1936 when he was trying to do a little biographical/genealogical research of his own. The first (click pages for larger images; full text is after the jump) is to the clerk of LaSalle County, and he's hoping to find records of his family's residence from around the time of his birth.
The second letter is to the Railroad Retirement Board. He doesn't explicitly mention it here, but I recall a couple of my mom's aunts, Tim's daughters Catherine and Betty, saying he was trying to establish his date of birth in relation to a pension that might be due.
One question I have about these: Did he send them? As he says, he's earnestly interested in getting answers. So my guess is that these are copies of versions he sent. I haven't found any records in the sparse collection of family documents to suggest what answers he might have gotten. The full text of the letters is available through the link below. If the lines break in an odd way, it's because I tried to stick to how he broke the lines, starting nearly each new line with a capital letter. I've also tried to copy his punctuation and spelling.