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Life: A sweet fruit

WELL. It has certainly been a week, and what a contrast from the life I was living last year.




Traveling. I live next to California, and (some people would say that I'm risking hyperbole, but such people are shamefully wrong) California is undeniably the best place in the entire world, so I have to go there at every available opportunity.

Look at those mountains! That lake! Which is Mono Lake, by the way, a body of water 350 miles from the The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porciúncula. But 350 miles is not enough miles to stop a gigantic, sickening metropolis from destroying an ecosystem. Back in the '40s, after LA had killed the Owens Valley (another astonishingly spectacular place) and Owens Lake, the greedy beast turned her thirsty gaze Northward and started sipping poor Mono. The city stopped draining the lake about 15 years ago by court order and now it's slowly returning to its old saline self.

Whereas last year I went to Pinnacle Mountain a lot and sometimes to the Ouachitas. Not that those are bad, but California, man. California. The thing is, you're thinking, "hey, so they have beaches, a nice city (SF, obv), some big trees, but they don't have everything." Well, you're wrong. They have EVERYTHING. Everything done well.




The Owens Valley, once a wealthy farming area. See "Chinatown" for the reason that it no longer is.





Whoa buddy. After a long but visually appealing drive on US395 and CA190, one is presented with the option of pulling 1/2 mile off the road to Father (Insert Irish Name Here) Point a few miles after entering Death Valley National Park. I've never seen such an astonishing vista. The view is to 20 miles on the other side of the valley, which drops about 3-4000 feet from where you see the car parked. I wanted to put the car on that little peninsula of road you can see back there but there was a particularly nasty section that I didn't want to risk. That's the Panamint Valley, by the way; Death Valley is on the other side of the mountains in the background.




These are some excellent dunes which killed my camera, but it was pretty much worth it because I got to roll down them and generally experience some dumb glee that I haven't had in a while.

After a full day and a half of exploring Death Valley and environs, I decided to go to LA for no better reason than it was only three hours away. It was a questionable choice, and there were great moments, but it was on the whole not terribly spectacular. On the way back, CALTRANS failed to update their road conditions report, and so I took a long and unnecessary detour because I thought that the Sierras were pretty much impassable, and ended up buying unnecessary snow chains and then, when in Nevada, passed a Sheriff and got pulled over by NHP, who happened to also be there right then, so I got two tickets, and I already got a ticket in October- immediately after getting out of a defensive driving course, too; we're talking 5 or 10 minutes here- and I just got a letter saying that I can't renew my insurance because I didn't tell them I moved to Nevada. Just so you can see that not EVERYTHING is great.

Although I did get that promotion at work. Starting tomorrow I'm going to be in charge of 11 people, all of whom I have been working with since August and most of whom applied for the same promotion. Should be interesting.

Life!

Many things

Keeley, I severely plagiarized an email I sent to you to form the main body of this somewhat unexciting but grossly overdue post. So fucking read it, Benji and Alex.

That's a picture of Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam. The giant bridge being built in front of it to relieve traffic on US 93, which is one of southern Nevada's only links to Arizona and now gets terribly congested because it has to cross the dam. I took this pciture on my 3-day drive back to Oklahoma back in December.

I worked near Lake Mead for the last few weeks until last tour, when I was west of Vegas in the Spring Mountains. The last week we were at Lake Mead was great, though. I thought that we would be on the same boring project that we'd been doing for a while- clearing semi-urban places of tamarisk (saltcedar- which uses up more water than native plants and crowds them out) but instead we worked in Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We were still doing a similar thing, but it was with a different species of tamarisk (athel, or tamarix aphyllus) and it was in a spectacular place, and we were camped in the middle of nowhere. It was great. Of course, I didn't have my camera, since I thought we would be doing the stupid project. I had taken it the previous two times that we went down to the Overton area. (Zoom in- a little over halfway zoomed the satellite photo changes to one more recent, and a huge chunk of the lake vanishes. We worked mostly in the area to the east of Overton where, in the zoomed out photo, you can see a round chunk of lake, now totally dry. )
The work wasn't anything spectacular, just girdling the trees (chipping away the bark in a circle around the tree) and spraying chemicals on them- we didn't even get to use chainsaws, damn it-, but it was nice to walk around all day in a pleasant place, and the weather was great. Most of the time we were working along the former perimeter of Lake Mead; until ten years ago or so, the whole square mile or two we covered was all under 10-20 feet of water. See that picture above? The white is the former water level. So I was walking around in a desert landscape, but the ground was littered with shells and boating detrius (mostly old beer cans, but also an anchor or two and a couple of buoys). You couldn't even see the lake from where we were; it's at less than 49% capacity and Las Vegas will have serious problems by 2010 if it keeps dropping. Luckily they are spending $2-3 billion dollars to build a pipeline from east and central Nevada to steal water from aquifers there. Awesome.

It's a great place though. The last day we worked we didn't have all that much work to do, so we just walked around and explored. I climbed a plateau and found sherds of Anasazi pottery, which we GPS'd and reported to the NPS. It's of a very specific type that was made in the Moapa Valley about 1000 years ago. It was pretty incredible. I'll try to get a picture of them from someone who did bring their camera. Yeah, I sure did lament that decision to not bring it.

Anyway, it was a great tour, and helped by the fact that I am feeling pretty well again after being assaulted by a severe cold/sinus infection that began on December 30th when I had to drive across the Rockies in a horrible snowstorm and ended up in the coldest, most trashy motel in Helper, Utah (also famous for being the only motel in Helper, Utah). Anyway, the only bad part about that work week was a windstorm that blew in our last night there and blew everyone's tent down when they were still in them. But my old Eureka was the last tent down. I found out that I was the only one whose tent lasted until 630. I was laying awake (far too noisy to sleep) when I heard a rip, and the rain fly came loose; before long, the entire tent was on top of me and nearly blowing away with me in it. It was hard to get dressed that morning, and even harder to pack, as you might imagine. But I just checked the tent and it's fine, so, perfect. And last week we had an easy project- mostly just brushing and limbing to reduce wildfire fuels, and we got to stay in a boy scout camp with running water and bunk beds and a kitchen. For the next few weeks we're working near Reno, which means I can come home every night, which will be insane.

I tried to pick up refurbished bike from the bike collective here- you pick out a beat-up old thing, and they fix it up all nice for you- and it was supposed to be done a week ago, but they are continually finding problems with it. A couple of my friends here got nice bikes from them and I'm a little jealous because I keep waiting for a god damn nice bike. I tried, but they are hard to get in contact with and I saw an ad on Craigslist that was posted when I was away last week and I'm pretty sure that they sold my bike to someone else without telling me about it.

I had an interview for a promotion at work a couple of weeks ago and it went well. The only thing is, if I'm promoted, I'm in charge of people I've been equals with since August. Apparently someone was told that I was probably going to get the promotion, so I'm excited, but I haven't actually been told that by anyone in charge of anything. I get to wear a blue helmet and boss people* around!

Kind of a weird thing, but I have already taken on responsibility on my crew so I think I'm fairly respected. And I went to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, which was a wonderful little break from Reno, though a bizarre contrast. California is just gigantic; the entire two-hour drive from Sacramento to SF is all developed and crammed full of people. The state is spectacular, though; I don't think I would mind living there. SF is kind of a rich ghetto, but man, rich ghettos are kinda nice.

I'm still trying to work out what I'm doing after August. I'm really considering staying here for another six months or so and then either applying for jobs with the Park Service or Forest Service- this work is perfect training for a lot of positions. I think I might consider the Peace Corps, too; I just found out that one of my bosses served with them in Ecuador, so he would be a good reference. I've considered Spain, too, but I just think it seems like a lot of commitment for something that's not going to be all that helpful. I don't know why I'm not that interested in it- an easy job, in a foreign country, with all sorts of great places to explore- but I keep vacillating so much. I'd get to go to Valencia, though, and that city really seems to know how to kick some ass. It would be nice to live in a place with civic institutions and cultural events that didn't revolve around machines with large engines (Reno's Hot August Nights [Motorcycles], Reno Air Races [obv], some sort of Rally race around downtown that necessitates the dumping of several tons of dirt on downtown streets, chainsaw competitions). I miss Spanish, too, and if I were in Valencia I could learn Valenciano- which is really just Catalan but they don't like to admit it.

Tomorrow I'm off to Death Valley for a few days. That's the good thing** about living in Reno- there are so many semi-mythical seeming places within an easy drive.

*Take into account that if you were to make a Vinn diagram of my friends and my coworkers here in Nevada it would be just a big purple dot: so much potential for disaster !

**Yeah, THE good thing. Fucking cesspool, this place. A fucking cesspool with a good climate and great views and pretty, clean little river and a couple of decent coffeeshops and a totally kick-ass Indian Buffet (Star of India can eat a dick) and a good Ethiopian restaurant. But trust me: Little Rock is far more pleasant.

but I like it here anyway

I'm back from another 8-day work tour near Ely (say it like Keeley without the K). I've been doing trail work since I've been here, but since my boss quit our crew has become a saw crew, meaning we get to cut down naughty trees all day instead of pound dirt or cut sagebrush out of the way. It's a welcome change, because chainsaws are really, really fun to use, as it turns out. Putting in the initial cuts, hearing a loud snap, seeing the tree come down and then cutting it into firewood-sized pieces is immensely pleasing. Well, as long as everything goes well. If you have a crappy chain or bar, it's hell to cut with. But mostly it's a pack of fun. This fellow has put in a face cut large enough to fit several people into, and he's about to start his back cut.





On the way out of town we stopped at this place and had a large breakfast and some bloody marys and then gambled. Well, I did. Just a dollar. In a slot machine. I lost, of course. Fun way to start the day, though.

And this didn't happend and I didn't see it on the way back, but google found it ("ely nevada"):


But I'll be out of contact again for a while, because I'm going to go camp in the Redwoods in California and maybe go back to San Francisco, and then I'm going to start another 8-day tour, which will be in wonderfully warm southern Nevada. So I'm probably out on Story 3, though I have enjoyed my few sentences. One thing that is nice and bizarre about these long stretches in the middle of nowhere is that I have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world, and I'm starting to lose my desire to know, for example, everything about the latest developments in Pakistan. This entire experience is so intense and self-absorbing that it's easy to forget about other things. I don't feel like I do much, but I feel like I have hardly any time to do much of anything.

Also, I had my birthday, and to celebrate we all went to town and had Mexican food, and of course I had to wear a giant sombrero. Halloween was not celebrated in the field, but I did finally get around to dressing up as Mahmoud Ahmedinejad (as I had intended to do last year) at a pre-party the previous weekend.

You really should come visit and get a feel for how big and different this place is. I'm starting to really like some things about Nevada: the massive, relentlessly open landscape, the lines of mountain ranges that cross the Great Basin, the perfect (if sometimes a bit chilly) climate, and the lack of moralistic Christian crap that assaults you so constantly in the South. Now, it might be debatable whether it's really an improvement to be assaulted by enticements for gambling, drinking, and whores- which are legal, by the way, in every county except Washoe* (Reno) and Clark (Las Vegas)- but at least it's stripped of the self-righteousness that I'm so allergic to.

When camped in central Nevada, you can see all sorts of military activity at night, and you can hear bombing practice all the time.

Nevada is pretty empty, human-wise:

If you subtract the population of Clark county (1,912,654) and Washoe county (409,085) from the population of the state as a whole, you get 173,790, which is how many people live in the rest of the state. Less than Little Rock!

some people don't take Nevada seriously

I'm still in Reno.

Obv.

I think the dream is dead.

I reported a fire today. It was a car, in a parking space under a motel. I didn't stick around to see what happened.

I've been waiting 45 minutes in the library for photos to download so I can put them on a disk. It's boring and the weather is spectacular. I want to see a movie.

The above photo is where I worked for 8 days last week, Arc Dome Wilderness. That's the Arc Dome on the left.

Nevada- never short of sagebrush.

I'm learning Russian now, partially just because I live with a Russian and partially because I've always wanted to. Man, it's way harder than Spanish.

I'm sorry, Benji. I know you were expecting more. But I have to go ride my bicycle around in all this delicious sunshine and warmth.

I leave you with a picture of the Circus Circus clown (a pretty nasty fellow,):

The Crappiest Nice Weekend in Nevada

It's time for anagrams. I'm sure you're all aware that Reno is the Biggest Little City in the World, but did you know:

Nero, chill: Bill got greedy tit swine;

Oren, I set it: OBGYN will greet child;

or

G, by tithing, slid by crew to eel?

I think I left some letters out, but they still came out better than my anagrams of "Keep Tahoe Blue", a ubiquitous and often-spoofed bumper sticker in these parts:

E, poke lube hate!

Peel a beet, Hoku.

U peek heat bole.

Beep, take you hole.

He leak, toke up, be.

Also, I either left my keys in one of the crew trucks (inconvenient) or totally lost them (awful). While checking my account balance at my Bank of America ATM, I became agitated that I apparently didn't get paid- the fucktards at the bank acted astonished that I was asking for a routing number when I set up my direct deposit, and I blame it squarely on their their incompetent asses- and left my card in the machine.

I went to see a show last night- had to ride my bike, since I don't have access to my automobile at the moment (not really a bad thing, riding my bike all around this weekend)- and I was horrified. After two bands I had to leave; the third band, which I had come to see because of their awesome name (The Fucking Ocean) was apparently pretty good. At least I got out of the house, though.

But tomorrow I'll be back in the Sierras, camped by Tahoe.

Reno- not famously literate

Well, I've been in Nevada for two weeks now and people are still making stupid "911" jokes. Stop.

There are slot machines in grocery stores and it hadn't rained in 85 days until today. I finished my first actual work week and some critter made off with one of my bourgeois sandals I bought in Denver. I know how to use chainsaws now (they are now far less intimidating) but have only cut down one tree with one; I have cut down another with a Pulaski. I'm just doing trail work right now; (man, do I ever love the ";") the projects we're working on have to do with reducing erosion that contributes to reducing the clarity of Lake Tahoe, which is stunning, really. I camp next to the lake and go for a chilly evening swim after work every day. I have yet to set foot in a casino but it might happen on this four-day weekend of mine. The local newpapers are total crap, even the independent weekly. I live with five people who are generally pretty easy to get along with and all interesting. Things are going well and yesterday they started lettting me drive the work truck, which is a little intimidating because it's giant. There are so many interesting aspects to this place but it hides under a facade of general sleaziness. My worksite for the next couple of months- mentioned previously- is next to rich-ass South Lake Tahoe, California, which very nearly burned down a couple of months ago. You can see the exact point at which Nevada starts on almost every border, because there is a casino right there, in some cases a mere three feet away from California. Casinos are the only tall buildings in Reno. I can't tell what else there is to this town, besides the Cemex plant.

It's certainly not Arkansas-y.

Bourgeois hell

Whew! It's been a while, hasn't it? But I can't let Benji get ahead of me on posting about angst-y decisions that eventually work their way out. I have a decision of my own, but I guess I can't depend on Google for a solution: Your search - "nevada versus spain" - did not match any documents. Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.

Damn. I have to do this on my own. So which type of anxiety do I want? The first choice, the most obvious choice, and the one which I was counting on for months, is going to Spain in September. I would be an assistant English teacher at an official language school and a secondary school in Fraga, Aragón, a town of about 15,000-20,000 people where the dominant language is Fragatí, a dialect of Catalán.
I shall list the advantanges of this choice, followed my its disadvantages:

• "Wow," I would be thinking (for about two months), "SPAIN."
  
• It would be really, really fun to learn Catalan
• It might be kind of fun to teach weird stuff about the US
• My Spanish would certainly improve
• I could travel, in Europe!
  

BUT:

• Foreigner Hell, the experience of being a retarded child in a place you know nothing about
• Horrible loneliness that would inevitably ensue
• €630 does not go that far, plus it's awfully expensive to fly over there
• What the hell am I going to do when I get back?
  
• Doesn't really add to my skills
• Teaching: Not that great

The second choice has only developed in the last couple of weeks. It would be going to Nevada and working for a year with the Nevada Conservation Corps, doing manual labor while camping out most of the time.

• It's Americorps, so I would get money for school at the end
• I would learn an awful lot about a region that's always fascinated me
• I would get to work on lots of satisfying projects that I feel are worthwhile
• I'd likely be living not too far from Lake Tahoe, and I could go there during some of my time off
• Camping all the time, gorgeous wild areas

HOWEVER:

• It's kind of crazy-different from what I had planned
• I really, really hope that I would get along with my co-workers, since I would we doing really intense work with them and living with them for a year
• Having to renounce Spain project, after accepting it enthusiastically
  
• General social anxieties
• Potential for life-altering chainsaw mutilation, especially considering how many times I've cut myself with nothing more than a god damn kitchen knife

A bunch of images that I like that I downloaded but probably won't ever be able to work into a post about anything, so enjoy!

It's time for some kimchee

I'm celebrating Korea Week©!

Not really. I just watched a movie about North Korea's Mass Games that was utterly fascinating. It's called "A State of Mind" and it focuses on two young gymnists as they compete to perform in the show. The Mass Games, by the way, are where you see all those incredible images of thousands and thousands of people doing sychronized things to create some sort of gigantic propoganda image. But the documentary shows a lot of ordinary life in the DPRK. Something that's interesting is how genuine the people (granted, most are children...) are when they talk about their devotion to Kim Il Sung (the Father) and Kim Jong Il (the General). It makes sense, if you know almost nothing of the outside world. That country is seriously traumatized by the memory of the Korean War- some of their fears of an American attack seem justified.

In less than twenty years, there will be almost no one left, probably, who remembers a time before the DPRK and all of its propaganda. Isn't that wierd to think about?


Then:

Tonight I went for a walk and found the brand-new Korean War memorial at MacArthur Park, which was paid for almost entirely, it seems, by Little Rock's Korean sister city and Samsung Corporation. It was a nice foil to the previous night's film. Just across the DMZ is a nation that is all about some US imperialism, and they speak the same language, have the same pre-1940s cultural history, etc...

A bunch of random things

1. I correctly predicted- in February- the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy. It came to me in a dream.

2. Among other things, I dreamt last night that involved the fate of Haley Barbour- the governor of Mississippi. I'm actually afraid to post what that involved for fear of questioning by some dumb federal agency, but ask me sometime if you're curious. It's not all that interesting but it is noteworthy considering I had all those other scary airplane dreams a while back.

3. Check out this totally awesome Mitt Romney quotation, which comes only a week or so after his declaration that Battleship Earth was his favorite book:

"There is no work more important to America's future than the work that is done within the four walls of the American home...(i)t seems that Europe leads Americans in this way of thinking...France, for instance, I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms where either party may move on when their term is up. How shallow and how different from the Europe of the past."

At least the fascists weren't shallow or anti-family.

4। Benji mentioned the book The Nine Nations of North America in a comment on my last post (which you should look at, if you haven't already). It was written by Joel Garrau and published in 1981, and it explores pretty much the same idea, but he divides all of North America as such:

I think he makes one huge (but somewhat understandable, given the date of publication of the book): the Empty Quarter. I think that's a huge and contrite way to deal with a region that is far more culturally, politically and economically diverse than most people are willing to give it credit for. He probably can't be totally faulted for not having the forsight to predict the demographic effects of California vomiting its population across the region, but I still think that it's based on a very dated idea of the West being dominated by the extraction industries; it sits out there on his map like some sort of colony for the rest of the real states to mess with.* Extraction still play a huge part, but the tourism/retirement/real estate industries seem to be playing a much bigger role. I also think it's crucial that he left the Mormon homeland in there, because that's an area that's clearly culturally distinct from the rest of the region, though not economically all that much different.

Plus, west Texas and Wisconsin in the same region? I think don't like the map is that I'm much more interested in cultural areas, whereas his map is much more focused on just economic links.

I also wanted to share a related map that I found at Fake is the New Real: It's a division of the US into proposed new electoral college districts. I like that Nevada et al are known as "Loving Hands".

5. While we're on the subject of maps, here's one of roadless areas of the US. The more red a county is, the smaller "roadless volume"or percentage of land without roads:

6. Connie Chung. Remember when she got Newt Gingrich's mom to say that Hilary was a "bitch"?

*Well, it was just that for most of the 20th century, but the last 25 years have seen such a population upswing for the interior west that I think it's important to start recognizing it as a population center and political power base in its own right.

Proposal

I've created a map that reorganizes the USA around my percieved cultural regions.

In this new USA, there are only 17 states. Except for the New England states, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, all states have been divided in some way.

The new state of Deseret probably has the strongest cultural cohesion. It was tricky to do the Midwest, since I'm not very familiar with that region. For example: where does St. Louis fit in? It's certainly not in the same cultural category as Kansas City, but is it more influenced by Midwestern or Southern culture? I considered puttin it in Delta but I decided it was much more of a Louisville- and to have Houston and St. Louis in the same category would be a little ridiculous.

Arizona is another state I'm not totally sure of. Southern California would probably be distinct enough to merit its own state, but then again, Orange County and San Diego seem like they would have a lot in common with Las Vegas and Phoenix. It would probably be better to roughly divide down the middle, making a different state out of most of the old New Mexico, down through the Big Bend region, and encompassing most of eastern Arizona, including Tucson.

So here's an updated map:













I can think of no real reason why this would be a good idea, but it's kind of fun to play with. It would probably actually be a total disaster to add the other collapsing rust belt economies to Michigan, and the clump all the impoverished Mississippi delta regions together, not to mention adding all of Nevada and Idaho's Mormons to Utah.


Suggestions?

The Ministry of Bad Taste

They strike again. First it was the utterly tasteless, casino-like new dollar coins (not to mention the hideous Jefferson on the new nickels). Now you have to be embarrassed while travelling abroad, too.

I'm not opposed to new colors, designs or symbols for currency or for passports. I'm simply opposed to bad taste. Does anyone remember that terrible sitcom Mamma's House? It's the same general category, aesthetically.

Call it the trickle-down effect of six years of incompetence. Why aren't these things allowed to have some dignity? Why are we trying sell the USA with the damn passport? Commerce, to this government, is on the same plane as national institutions, if not vastly superior in both ideas and morals (which is what is so infuriating to liberals like myself...). Are we even a serious country anymore? Is that a silly question at this point?


I did a google search for "passport" and among the first images were these examples of a Yemeni and a Palestinian passport, belonging to Faud al Shobaki. From www.intelligence.org.il:












FAR more dignified. Fuck an eagle.

If you read my last comment in the weather post, I totally called the Severe Storm warning 5 minutes before those suckers at the NWS:

"I...have for the last hour and a half been speculating on the squall line developing to the west (at this point it's running from roughly Hot Springs to Branson, and the strongest cell is around the border between Perry and Yell counties)."

OCD or hobby? Way too close to call, probably.