Category: Current Affairs

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Scoop

I’ve gotten to the point in my journalism career where people I once worked with are showing up in the obits. One appeared there yesterday: Malcolm Glover, late cops reporter and rewrite man for The San Francisco Examiner. Here’s the story, which made print more than a week after his death. I didn’t know Malcolm well. I was usually in the position of sweating him on deadline for a short breaking story on something or other. But he went way back and did, as his obit suggests, seem to know everyone in the Police Department (we won’t go into the mixed blessing of that). His nickname was Scoop, though I never knew anyone in the newsroom to actually use that when addressing him.

How far back did he go. Again, as the obit says, back to the days when the paper was owned by William Randolph Hearst. Part of his legend and charm was the tale, which Malcolm didn’t need a lot of prompting to repeat, that his relationship with Hearst dated back to his childhood in the Northern California mill town of McCloud. As Malcolm told it, Hearst was at a general store in town. Malcolm, then a lad of 10 or so, held the door open for him. “The Chief” was so impressed with the lad’s good manners that he asked his name and, one thing leading to another, put him to work on the Hearst’s nearby estate, Wintoon. When Malcolm wanted to try working at one of Hearst’s papers, the old man got him a job as a photographer at The Monarch of the Dailies. Later, he switched to reporting, and outlasted scores of whipper-snappers and young hotshots. Includiing me.

I’m sure some of The Examiner people who worked with him longer have some great stories about him. I’d still love to hear them sometime.

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Reinvigorating the Haiku Economy

Robert Hass’s introduction to “The Essential Haiku” includes a short, unfussy description of where haiku came from and a brief explanation of some of what’s going on behind the scenes in these 17-syllable miniatures. Here’s part of what he says:

“The insistence on time and place was crucial for writers of haiku. The seasonal reference was called a kigo and a haiku was thought to be incomplete without it. … For example, the phrase, ‘deep autumn’ or ‘autumn deepens,’ is traditional and accumulated references and associations from earlier poetry as well as from the Japanese way of thinking about time and change. … [In Buson’s poems] the reference to snow–yuki, which can also mean ‘snowfall’– … is always connected to a sense of exposure to the elements, for which there is also a traditional phrase, fuyuzare, which means ‘winter bareness.’ The practice was sufficiently codified and there was even a rule that the seasonal reference should always appear in the first or third unit of the three phrase poem.

“… These references were conventional and widely available. They were the first way readers of the poems had of locating themselves in the haiku. Its traditional themes–deep autumn, a sudden summer shower, the images of rice seedlings and plum blossoms, of spring and summer migrants like the mountain cuckoo and the bush warbler, of the cormorant-fishermen in summer, and the apprentices on holiday in the spring–gave a powerful sense of a human place in the ritual and cyclical movement of the world.”

Reading the several hundred poems Hass chose for the book, you intuit the importance of season and nature. Here’s just one, having opened the book at random:

Mosquito at my ear–
does it think
I’m deaf?

All of which got me thinking that what we very badly need to revivify the American haiku industry is an updated list of seasonal references–urban, rural, whatever works–that evoke season and nature and reflect the way we think about change. This would work best as a group exercise, and I’m just one would-be haiku apprentice. But anyway, I’ll go first:

Slushy shoes
Icy sidewalk
Frozen socks
Stinging snowball
Fingers numb
Grimy snowbank
Deserted luge track
Oil-drum fire
Catchers and pitchers
Spring ahead
March Madness
Smart-ass robin
Mockingbird
Ants again
Termites swarm
Yellow Peeps
Tinactin time
Prom queen pimple
Unharvested prune

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California Water: The Judge’s Questions

The judge’s questions: Last Friday, federal Judge Oliver W. Wanger issued questions to a panel of experts he appointed to consider the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s biological opinion on endangered smelt in the Delta. To really make sense of the list, which focuses on a narrow range of issues concerning the service’s scientific conclusions about smelt migrations and the effect of Delta pumping on the fish, you’ll need to go and wade through the evidence presented in the trial so far (when you get done with all the motions, declarations, statements, and supporting research, you might be looking at tens of thousands of pages). But the list is interesting even without that file trek, because it sheds some light on what subjects Wanger sees as central to the case. (Here’s the order, in PDF form: Judge Wanger’s Questions).

Who are the “706 Experts” he refers to therein? They’re a group of scientists Wanger chose last November after nominations from the water contractor plaintiffs who are challenging the smelt biological opinion and from the federal agencies who are defending it. “706” is a reference to Federal Rule of Evidence 706, which provides for court appointment of expert witnesses. The panel is: Paul Fujitani, an employee of the Bureau of Reclamation, as an expert on Central Valley Project operations (the bureau is a defendant in the case); Thomas P. Quinn, a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington; Andre Punt, another UW professor, an expert in fish population dynamics and statistics; and, “if necessary,” John Lehigh, an employee of the state Department of Water Resources, as an expert on State Water Project operations.

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California Water: ‘The Master Condition’

“The master condition not only of any future developments in the West but of the maintenance and safeguarding of what exists there now, is the development and conservation of water production. Water, which is rigidly limited by the geography and climate, is incomparably more important than all other natural resources in the West put together.”

–Bernard de Voto, quoted in “American Places,” by Wallace Stegner

As elegant a statement as you can find to explain what all the ruckus is about.

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California Water News Flash: The Pumps Are On

Allowing that one person’s misconception is another’s gospel truth, I still have the impulse to correct others when I hear them say something that I know or believe to be, well, wrong. So here’s something from the current battle over California water that always makes me want to say, “Hey, wait a minute.”

San Joaquin Valley water interests and their allies, including members of Congress, want more water than they’ve gotten the last few years. Their biggest problem is that nature has not cooperated. The previous three winters were drier than normal, and the amount of rain and snow that fell on the state’s watersheds were far below normal. That circumstance happened to coincide with Endangered Species Act litigation that has led, for the time being at least, to limits on the amount of water the state and federal water projects are allowed to pump from the Delta to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. Those limits, set by federal wildlife agencies and designed to protect the Delta smelt and runs of chinook salmon, have led the aforementioned water interests to scream that the Delta pumps have been shut down, that farmers are being wiped out and valley communities sacrificed for a few lousy fish.

Now, whatever you happen to think of the last part of that formulation–that those who are trying to figure out how to save the fish want to see the San Joaquin Valley “dry up and blow away” (as Rep. Jim Costa, a valley Democrat, put it)–you shouldn’t have to think much about the first part, that the pumps have been shut down. That’s because it’s not true. The pumps are running, day in and day out. The major destination for a lot of that water is the San Luis Reservoir, a key storehouse for valley water, and it’s filling up.

But despite all the readily available data on Delta water shipments, the untruth that the pumps have been switched off is too good a propaganda point for some people to pass up. Rep. Devin Nunes, who represents much of Fresno and Tulare counties in Congress, says about water resources policy: “Its [sic] Simple: Turn on the Pumps.” Since last session, he’s been pushing a bill called the “Turn on the Pumps Act.” (The bill is, in fact, very simple: “In connection with the operations of the Central Valley Project, neither the Bureau of Reclamation nor any agency of the State of California operating a water project in coordination of the Central Valley Project shall restrict operation of their projects pursuant to any biological opinion issued under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, if such restrictions would result in levels of export less than the historical maximum levels of export” (italics mine).

Got that? No limits on pumping to protect endangered species, period, unless the limit results in as much or more water being pumped out of the Delta than the projects have ever pumped.

Rep. Tom McClintock, a Southern California Republican who relocated to and won the northeastern California congressional seat in 2008, is also a source of unrelenting “turn on the pumps” rhetoric. Earlier this month, he issued a broadside against Democrats in the House Water and Power Subcommittee for blocking consideration of Rep. Nunes’s excellent bill. “For the sake of humanity, Madam Chairwoman and my Democratic colleagues, turn on these pumps.” You have to admire the way these folks keep their rhetoric on a short leash.

If I were in Congress myself, I’d rise to tell my good friends and respected colleagues, “I have good news. The pumps are on! Even as I speak, rain is sweeping over your districts and on your thirsty constituents, helping fill the reservoirs not just with water, but with hope. And in that spirit of optimism, here’s a nonpartisan, nonsectarian suggestion: Pray for more rain. I am. That way, the reservoirs will keep rising, agriculture will get its water, and maybe there will be some left over for smelt and salmon and the thousands of people who depend on them. And maybe we won’t have to hear you shriek ‘Turn on the pumps!’ again.”

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Journal of Self-Promotion: Water and Fish, on the Rocks

My recent forays into the world of California water and fish, along with a couple recent stories I did, resulted in an invitation to be a panel member on KQED’s Forum program (a daily news discussion show we do). I was on an hour-long segment entitled Salmon vs. Jobs (if I had been editing that, I’d have added a question mark) that centered on Senator Feinstein’s announcement that she wants to amend a federal jobs bill to guarantee minimum water levels to a section of the San Joaquin Valley. That water must be delivered, she says, notwithstanding a drought and the threat to endangered fish and despite the fact a scientific review of actions taken to protect the fish–a review she instigated last fall–is still in progress. After being asked on the show Thursday evening, I stayed up late doing some homework on the issue, then followed that up with a nervous (i.e., lousy) night’s sleep. But the show went OK once I remembered that I had to breathe to talk. The audio is here:

And once I got through with that … I ran back to the newsroom and finished the prep work for a feature story I did on a short-track speedskating club in Oakland (I had done the reporting a couple weeks ago, didn’t managed to get the piece written in time for air before the Olympics, and finally got it done this week, and it was broadcast yesterday). The audio for that one is here:

What is the connection between those two stories. My good pal Coach Bobby Knight says the common thread is water, liquid, then frozen.

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California Water: A Word (or Two) About Smelt

I spent Wednesday in Sacramento, listening to federal and state fish biologists and water managers talk about the Delta smelt–an endangered fish sometimes described as a “minnow”–what they’re learning about species, and how to keep it from being pulled into the pumping facilities that send water to the great farms and cities to the south. I am a sucker for terminology and argot, and the session was full of it. A few key terms and some that just sort of tickled me:

Entrainment. That’s the process whereby currents created by the state and federal pumps capture smelt (and juvenile salmon and other species) and slowly draw the fish toward them.

Turbidity. Simply put, cloudiness of water. It’s a hot topic in smelt circles. A consultant for one of the big San Joaquin Valley water contractors repeatedly expressed the thought that since smelt are believed to prefer turbid (cloudy) water, reduced turbidity in the area near the pumps–meaning clearer water–is probably responsible for the decline or absence of the fish there.

YOY. Year of young; fish born during the current year.

WOMT. (Pronounced “whomped.”) Water Operators Management Team.

CHTR losses.Fish mortality caused by “capture, handling, transport, and release.” CHTR happens when fish are entrained, drawn toward the pumps, and “salvaged” at a “fish facility” adjacent to one of the pumping plants. Depending on the species, they’re then trucked someplace in the western reaches of the Delta to be released.

PEI. Potential Entrainment Index. A statistic method for forecasting times and circumstances when smelt may be sucked toward the pumps.

X2. From a paper on the delta smelt habitat: “the distance in kilometers from the Golden Gate to the position of the 2 percent salinity isohaline.” (From elsewhere: “Isohalines are lines (or contours) that join points of equal salinity in an aquatic system.”)

And I could go on. But as a non-scientist, non-engineer, layperson, here’s what struck me in the discussions: How much uncertainty exists about the smelt–where it is, how it gets from one place to another, its spawning behavior. Of course, this mattered less when the Delta was full of smelt, and it was probably studied much less intensively than it is now. Now that the fish may be going extinct, it’s harder to study and get answers that may help preserve it.

I checked my impression about the uncertainty with a biologist at the meeting. They said, “That’s the elephant in the room–the uncertainty. When scientists meet with each other, they’re more open about it. In a public setting, they tend not to want to get into that.”

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UC-Berkeley: Our Trashy Campus

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Presidents Day newsflash from just outside the hallowed halls of academe: UC-Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza is (or was when we visited, anyway) a friggin’ mess. We’ve lived here a while–our passports mention a date in the ’70s–and we have never seen the plaza, the gateway to the pride of our state’s system of higher education, trashed to this degree. The main symptom: numerous overflowing garbage cans and lots of refuse strewn every which way (yes, you heard me right). Our guess (fact-finding has not been initiated) is that maintenance cutbacks at the university meant that no one was available to haul away the rubbish during the long weekend. Hell of an impression for visitors and townspeople alike, but a holiday feast for the pigeons.  

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California Water: Hearts and Minds

I saw an interesting story last night from the Sacramento Bee’s Matt Weiser: “Underground Tunnel Gets Closer Look for Shipping Water Through Delta.” The piece deals with the latest twist on a long-talked-about fix for the plumbing in the state and federal systems that move water from Northern to Southern California. Back in 1982, Governor Jerry Brown promoted a ballot initiative for a massive new waterway–dubbed the Peripheral Canal–that would iron out some kinks in the current system of pumps and canals. Seen in the north as a Southern California water grab and almost everywhere as an overpriced boondoggle, the initiative went down with a 62.7 percent “no” vote.

But because the need and competition for water has only increased since then, the idea has never gone away. It’s back this year as part of the debate over the $11.1 billion bond measure on this November’s ballot. The initiative doesn’t specifically set aside money for a Peripheral Canal, but everyone assumes that at least some of billions in the initiatives uncommitted funds will go to what’s now called a “conveyance” project.

The canal is still the object of fear and loathing in the Delta and elsewhere in Northern California–just another act in the endless plot to take the region’s most precious resource. But one thing different from past years, though: Some major environmental groups have signed on to both the bond and plans for some sort of Peripheral Canal. Why the change of heart? I think it comes down to the widespread recognition that the tortuous method of channeling water from the Sacramento River into the Delta and then into the aqueducts is broken and is a prime suspect in the collapse of the Central Valley’s once-magnificent chinook salmon runs and other environmental problems. The thinking is that if you straighten out the plumbing, you take care of the major hazards to the fish and to the Delta ecosystem.

Once you have the new canal or tunnel, all you have to do is manage the water flowing through it to the benefit of everyone involved.

And that’s the problem. To believe a canal will fix an environmental disaster, one must believe that the demand for new water and the machinations to get it by any means possible will suddenly just evaporate. Letting high river flows sweep through the Delta and out to sea–part of what’s necessary to aid salmon migrate to the Pacific–is condemned as a waste by those who want to put that water to work in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. That belief just won’t disappear overnight.

Today’s outstanding exhibit of that mindset is a move from Senator Dianne Feinstein to essentially suspend the Endangered Species Act to guarantee increased federal water deliveries to the valley (apparently no one has told her that the main reason less water has been going down there is California’s three-year drought; maybe she could write a bill to outlaw below-average rainfall, too). Feinstein says she’s concerned about farm jobs–the areas worst-hit by the drought have been prone to cycles of high unemployment for decades. But the first thing that comes to mind when you hear about her plan is her eager readiness to go to bat for big campaign donors in the valley who are unhappy with federal plans to protect salmon and other endangered species (see “Corporate Farmer Calls Upon Feinstein to Influence Environmental Dispute” by Lance Williams of the Center for Investigative Reporting).

That’s the way the game is played. New ground rules about how water is handled might change that. A new tunnel or canal won’t