WhirledView

The Biter Bitten

By Patricia Lee Sharpe.

Ha! Ha! Ha!  Not only am I laughing out loud, I’m rolling around on my nice but not outrageously expensive carpet from Pakistan and laughing.

Back in May Mitt Romney was on a begging session among his fellow rich guys in a supposedly safe place, a b(m)illionaires safe house, so to speak, away from the rest of us—yeah, away from us losers, us victims of our own fecklessness, who don’t understand that tax breaks and subsidies for the rich are rewards for achievement while tax breaks and subsidies for the poor and the middle class represent a waste of taxpayers’ money on the lazy and mediocre.

Sorry, got carried away.

The Unsafe Safe House

Unfortunately, it’s hard to keep the riffraff (and/or their sympathizers) out of every banquet or champagne-fueled reception for the rich. In this case, Romney’s remarks got videotaped, some parts have been revealed and now he and his campaign people are neck deep in damage control.  Seems that the Republican candidate is uncomfortable with the sound of the sound bites from the plutocratic party.

A Bite That Bites

He should be.  This is the biggie: Romney asserted that the 47% of the U.S. population who support the opposition aka Obama  have a dependency complex. (I know.  This sounds ambiguous.  Blame Romney, not me.)  That’s nearly half of the U.S. population, folks.  Insulted. And I’m one of the slug-a-bugs, it seems.  Month after month, year after year, I paid into Medicare and Social Security and now—Horrors!—I’m cashing in on that investment. 

Sound bite two suggests that all those lazy louts who support Obama should go out and get a high paying job so they, too, can pay taxes instead of depending on subsidies.  Yeah!  You can imagine what would happen if I came in the door seeking a job commensurate with my skills and undiminished ability.  They’d look at my birth date and laugh.  As for those with more recent birth dates, how many people applying for unemployment benefits wouldn’t jump at a job that would support a family–pay the rent, pay the medical bills, buy healthy food, keep the kids in shoes that fit, get them to school in clothes that don’t make their luckier school fellows bully them, buy books....you get the drift.  Where are those jobs?  Not the fast food jobs.  The real jobs.  With health benefits so people don’t have to depend on those nefarious government handouts.

According to Romney, even those of us with relatively good jobs weren't and aren’t really paying all that much in taxes, while the much maligned rich are paying through the nose.  That all depends on how you do the math, of course.  A middle class person, whose taxes come to 25-30% of current income, does indeed pay less in toto than a richer individual.  However, when such middle class people pay five figure taxes, the contribution to the common good cuts to the bone of, say, being able to pay college tuitions, whereas when a billionaire's tax bite hits seven figures (or more),  all he suffers is the irritation of an ever so slight modification of the budget for fine wines, the number of first class air tickets per annum, the type of luxury car he gives his kids or the annoyance of scrimping on the servant talley to keep up a fifth home in an expensive condo in a sexy world class city.  In short, we in the tax-paying middle class have not only been helping the poor (which is fine) but subsidizing the rich—and for decades.  And the only thing that seems to trickle down to those of us in the 99%  from Romney's perch in the plutocratic stratosphere is scorn—the kind that dripped from this recently revealed Romney failure to find the "elegant" expression. It’s amazing!  He should thank us.  He should be very grateful that most Americans, acting against their own best interests and increasingly out of touch with the reality of less upward mobility in America, still identify up not down.

Romney Blames the Victims

Back to the jobs issue, which Romney pretends to care about and sees as the justification for keeping the rich rich.  Yes, indeed.  Lots of jobs have been created by American-based business over the past decades.  The trouble is they haven’t been at home.  They’ve been in China, India, Thailand, the Dominican Republic—you name it.  No wonder Romney wasn't inclined to save an American company manufacturing cars in the U.S. and thus providing jobs for Americans.

Whoops! Sorry.  I forgot about the other jobs that have been created by American multi- millionaires.  Think of the huge need for maids and gardeners to look after those multiple homes—to say nothing of dock owners, etc., to cater for the multiple yachts.  And aviation people to keep the private jets flying at 36,000 feet over the America that Romney's pals would prefer not to see or understand.

Poor Mitt!

Well, I sympathize with Mr. Put-upon Romney over this sound bite thing.  I’m firmly with all fair-minded people who object to quotes being taken so brutally out of context that they seem to mean the opposite of what was meant by the naive speaker or writer who uttered or wrote them.   This, of course, is not quite the case with the Romney sound bite, which is a fairly accurate stand-in for his political views.  Sometimes it's worse to be accurately represented than to be misrepresented. 

But here’s where my sympathy really stops.  How on earth can Romney complain of being victimized by the sound bite monster when he’s worked overtime to profit by a much nastier version of the same trick?

The Bite the Republicans Gloried Over

Here’s how.  Barack Obama made some remarks that were mined for sound bites not too long before the Republican convention.  Trying to expose the fallacy of extreme individualism, Obama said something like this: business people don’t build their businesses all by themselves in isolation from the larger society. What he meant was that the most clever, hardworking entrepreneurs need government-built infrastructure, they need good roads and safe skies, they need bacteria-free food to feed their kids and unpolluted water to drink, they need police and fire protection, they need schools to produce able workers, they need a reliable judicial system to protect contracts—all coming from taxpayer funds. Reliable, honest government, regulating sensibly, allows business to succeed in America as it does not in most other places in the world. And so, surely, business people  should be just a little thankful to the rest of us for creating the context for their prosperity. Their parents probably helped, too, with emotional support at the very least.

The Republicans pounced on that delicious sound bite.  They have tried to make it appear that Obama and his Democrats have no respect whatsoever for the system that did indeed produce prosperity for decades after World War II—until Wall Street, deregulated thanks to collusion between Republicans and the Clinton administration, brought the country to its knees.

In short, the recent Republican convention was built almost wholly on exploiting, in every possible way, this tempting sound bite to discredit Obama and the Democrats.

So please, Mitt, no more complaints about the sound bite monster.

Jobs, not Sneers

And, meanwhile, about those jobs, Mitt.  How abound bringing the millions you’ve stashed so mysteriously and conveniently out of sight in the Caymans and Switzerland right home,  right now.  Show us by example that millionaires are responsible Americans who deserve their tax breaks, that you and the others want to build a healthy U.S. at least as much as you want to enrich yourselves.  Do it now.  Create more tax payers.  Put the money to work.  Generate jobs, not just (untaxed) interest income.

Even David Brooks, employed by the New York Times as its premier conservative columnist, couldn’t swallow the Romney line on this one. He asserts that Romney doesn’t understand America—or Americans, who work, by all reliable accounts, harder than any other people on the face of the globe, given the opportunity to do so. Read his column from top to bottom.

But Brooks is indeed a Republican.  He tries to protect the Conservative cause by admitting that Romney is running an incompetent campaign.  Worse, even as Brooks concedes that a full 47% of the U.S. population isn’t in dependency mode, he fails to mention the obscene subsidies that make the rich ever richer, subsidies that Romney and his backers never deplore.  Oil and gas subsidies.  Subsidies for rich  farmers.  That 15% income tax limit for people who make their money on money. And so on.

On the other hand, you can’t call the energy gang losers, can you?  Bankers aren’t losers, either. They are gainers.  They are winners.  The system is rigged to benefit them---and with the Supreme Court's Citizens' United decision helping them to buy elections, they are in a position to stay that way.   On top.  Gloating.  Sneering.

Pass the Hankie, Please

Poor Mitt Romney. He thought he was talking only to the well-oiled in-crowd, the people who were very hopefully interviewing him for the leadership slot, the people who are doing their best to buy him the presidency, the people who expect he will act to protect them, the people who have nothing but contempt for those who haven't made it into the millionaires club—and the word got out.

Thank heaven!

In the Keep of Yorkshire

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent   

In the silence of the keep

one forgets time,

even who one is.

Romance gallops as sunlit dust swirls

in search of glory 

among the clouds.

(Left, Castle Keep. Photo by John C. Dyer)

But this was a real castle with a real history, the Neville’s Raby Castle near Durham, County Durham. One of post Conquest Britain’s early seats of great power, Raby rises with surprising majesty above Yorkshire’s bucolic rolling green fields.

 

 

 

 

(Above, left to right, Raby Castle, Stable Entrance to Gardens, Raby Castle Gardens. Below, left to right, View from a Gun, Deer in Castle Park, Raby Castle 2. All photos by John C. Dyer)

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Left, Within the Keep, photo by John C. Dyer)

We came to Raby at the request of friends from the States.    

This trip was a reunion of sorts. I had missed my college reunion.  The couple we accompanied to Raby attended the same small college modeled on Oxford.

MY SUMMER VACATION

By Wendi Maxwell, Guest Contributor

Wendi Maxwell brings personal insight and occasional stories from California, particularly the strange world of California politics and the new left. Maxwell is a former policy maker for California adult literacy projects

Let’s face it. I went to Europe looking for trouble.

This past year, I’ve followed the adventures of Occupy Oakland with great interest. I thought our vacation to Germany this summer might provide me with other examples of grassroots demonstrations. Europe had been simmering with demonstrations against ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) for months now. Perhaps I could find a demonstration while I was in Berlin.

Berlin did indeed bring me a street demonstration on the famous Unter Den Linden. A small crowd of demonstrators with costumes, drums, and signs gathered outside an expensive marble-clad business tower. Across the street, police watched with amusement. This was not the big blac block mob I had wanted, but I thought I’d check it out anyway.

“Guten tag! English anyone?”, I called out.  It turned out the demonstrators were a mixture of Germans, Americans, Greeks, and Spaniards. Everyone spoke English. What were they demonstrating? The corporatization of art, as exemplified by a gallery show underwritten by Deutsche Bank. The demonstrators were upset. Not only did artists have to pay their way in, but there were no free admissions for anyone – even for students. The German demonstrators in particular were incensed that no one was providing them with subsidies for their art. (In Berlin, they take their art seriously.) (Photo by Wendi Maxwell, June 2012 above: Berlin Protester).

I approached one demonstrator with a cardboard sign on a stick. “I write about Occupy Oakland. Can I take your picture? Can I write about you?” “Occupy Oakland?” came the response – “Man they’re hard core.”

“Yeah” I said. “Did you know that if you had that sign in Oakland, with a stick holding it up, you’d be arrested for carrying a weapon? And possibly beaten with your own stick?”

“Well,” mused the demonstrator, “these police don’t take us very seriously. There’s only five of them and they’re pretty relaxed.” And on travelling further down the street I realized that the police were not really there because of the demonstration. They were there because St. Hedwig’s Berlin Cathedral was celebrating the Mass of Corpus Christi and hundreds of clerics were processing through a parallel boulevard. The police were there for the Church, not for Art. (Photo by Wendi Maxwell, June 2012 above: Protester with a weapon).

A couple of days later we were in Dresden and ran across flyers advertising a Pirate Party mass demonstration against ACTA. Aha! Here was the demonstration I had looked for in Berlin. 

We went to the square at noon, but found it full of guitar-strumming evangelicals dancing and serving free curry lunch. Eventually I located two protestors – one with a bullhorn, and one with a sign, again on a stick. A block away I located another two demonstrators and directed them toward the first ones. No further demonstrators emerged. I did get a chance to learn about ACTA though… (ACTA sought to establish laws governing piracy of goods and the Internet. It was later defeated in the European Parliament.)(Photo left by Wendi Maxwell, June 2012: ACTA Protesters in Dresden).

On the Edge

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I saw the Gaultier exhibit at San Francisco’s De Young Museum last week.  Jean Paul Gaultier is one of the edgiest designers around although the exhibit is primly entitled “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier.”  The De Young is in one of this country’s edgiest cities.  The exhibit was crowded but not overbooked; the fashions on display dated from Gaultier’s earliest days – he was born in 1952 – to just a few years ago and almost all were designed for androgynist shows on the runway, not the street. (Photo of man's tartan suit by PHKushlis August 8, 2012)

 The talking mannequins were, for me at least, the highlights: their eyes blinked, rolled and winked and their lips moved in synch with their words.  These near androids were themselves worth the price of admission.  But then, I don’t have a Madonnaesque figure or personality, bras that resemble upside down ice cream cones make me uncomfortable and six inch heels – according to a recent Vogue article – are not just bad for the feet but also the back.  

I hadn’t been in California since 2008. 

Since then the Golden State has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and three of its cities went belly-up in the past month.  At least three more major ones – San Jose, Los Angeles and Fresno – are on the brink – or so I was told by people who know what they’re talking about.  Money is being moved from Peter to pay Paul and expenditures on quality of life items – like education, the arts and the roads disappear like Aladdin’s genie shrinking back into his lamp. 

Road beds are a disaster:  they remind me of Manila days when the only axel-safe vehicles were the Pajeros:  sturdy and high enough chassed SUVs to survive the city’s cavernous potholes during a typhoon.  

California prices, too, are off the charts.  Gas was $1.00 higher per gallon than in New Mexico.  Souvenir bottles of California wines were on sale for an average – or so it seemed – of $100 per bottle (not per case) at the Oakland International Airport where most flights service these United States.  Tickets to special museum exhibits approached New York’s MOMA and the facsimiles of Gaultier’s teddy bear were “on special” for $99 plus tax ruling out all but the affluent or the privileged.

Drive 80 miles to the east and the brown rolling hills give way to the Central Valley, this country’s most fertile farm land.  Irrigation ditches – or acequias as they’re called in the Sunshine State – transport the water from the Sierra-Nevadas to the valley's fields.  Water is the state’s real gold and the ill-effects of global warming play havoc with the precipitation and snow pack in the mountains.  Hence our food supply.

Centuries ago these trenches were a gift from Middle Eastern Arabs where water was also scarce.  Then they - bringing this innovative technological knowhow with them - dashed across North Africa and into Spain.  The Romans brought us roads; the Muslims brought us acequias. Both remain as indispensable as this century's information highway - courtesy of the US government.

Malaise in Mali: Is a Sudan-like Solution Desirable or Inevitable?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

So the Tuareg have occupied Timbuktu! Given the frequency of rebellion over the past century, I’m not surprised.  With a military coup diverting the attention of threatened civilian authorities as well as the politically ambitious army itself, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad swooped down on the prize they have long coveted. 

The New Ingredient

But something new has been added to the equation. Islam in Mali has always been described as regionally acculturated, moderate and tolerant. Tolerant of different Muslim sects. Tolerant of non-Muslim minorities.  Today’s game-changing addition is militant salafist Islam of the sort that’s sympathetic to if not synonymous with al Qaeda. What had always been a fierce campaign for ethnic autonomy or a separate state dubbed Azawad seems to have been overwhelmed by or manipulated by Islamic extremists.  Timbuku, former center of great learning and site of one of the most renouned libraries in the world, is being transformed into a theocratic nightmare à la Kabul under the Taliban.

How should the U.S. respond?  Before the Islamist complication, the alternatives were hard enough to weigh. A Sudan-like solution?  Or continued integration at all costs? Now all prospects seem uglier. Support the coup—or not?  Support bifurcation—or not—with or without Islamist influence?  Take on the Islamists?  Ignore them?   

The Wealth that Built a Library

The north-of-the-Niger territory claimed by the MNLA supports only about 10% of Mali’s population, but occupies more than half of Mali’s territory.  Picture a mere sprinkling of humans in very harsh terrain. Although most Malians are Muslim, life-styles North and South couldn’t be more different.  The Tuarag are at home in the desert.  They were notorious for camel-mounted caravan raiding back in the days when cross-Saharan trade featured great trains of dromedaries laden with gold to be bartered for life-sustaining salt.  These days drought has forced many Tuareg into a more sedentary life in the sahel on the margins of the desert. Further South, however, settled agriculture has always been the norm, along with migratory animal herding in the transition lands. Such differences notwithstanding, as powerful kingdom succeeded powerful kingdom over the centuries, the  wealth in the area that's Mali today was more than enough to support the fabled city of Timbuktu, with its well-stocked markets and vast intellectual and cultural resources.

Including the library, the source of my own fascination.  Over the years I’d managed to visit Nalanda, the site of the famous Buddhist university and library which had given intellectual backbone to the spread of the dharma for more than a millenium.  I’d also gone to Alexandria, primarily to imagine the city in its classical prime before its great library was destroyed.  Timbuktu was next on my list.  Getting there was my primary personal goal when I was posted to neighboring Sierra Leone. I brought a Jeep to Freetown, because I planned to drive to Timbuktu. What a terrific vacation that would make!

Driving to Timbuktu

Unfortunately, although the Tuaregs had reputedly entered into one of their more quiescent phases, the civil war in Sierra Leone went from bad to worse. I didn’t dare to drive through it.  I’d have to fly to Bamako, where I could engage a Landrover with an experienced and reliable driver.  In this, I followed recommendations from still unmet colleagues at U.S.I..S. Bamako. (Thanks again, friends!)  If anything happened to me, the driver would have to answer to his pals and my colleagues in the capital.  It was a very Malian arrangement—and there were several more pluses. The driver was fluent in French, which gave us a shared language.  He also spoke several local languages. 

And so, Landrover stocked with a zillion gallons of water, in case we lost our way in the desert, we crossed the Niger River and drove roughly east north east toward Timbuktu.  It would take us two days to cover the 440 miles.  After about 50 miles, pavement gave way to sandy ruts, sometimes deep and easy to follow, sometimes not, especially after dark.  Even the driver was relieved when we finally rolled into the town that was our overnight destination.  After that the complications began.  The simple guest house we’d been counting on no longer existed.  Most people we spoke to suggested that we sleep in the Landrover, preferably close to a police post.  And then, happily, we met a bunch of boys playing fussball outside a bar.  They directed us to a U.N. compound from which a French team was trying to oversee refugee resettlement during the current shaky truce in the unending war between the MNLA and the government in Bamako.

Hand Over the Landrover

Contrary to the reassuring reports that had reached Sierra Leone, the Tuareg were far from pacified.  That morning a band of them had barged into the U.N. compound and stolen a Landrover at gunpoint.  For that reason, perhaps, even  though our arrival was as unexpected as that of the raiders, the French observers were happy to shelter me and my Malian driver.  They fed us well, à la français, then offered me a choice: sleep on a cot in the kitchen or sleep on the same cot under the stars.  The choice was easy. The stars were so thick I hated to shut my eyes. 

I might have chosen differently if our hosts had informed us immediately about the morning’s raid.  “We didn’t want to worry you,” they explained at breakfast.  Over croissants, of course.

How could we not worry?   It would take us most of a day to slew through ever more treacherous sand to reach Timbuktu, which created anxiety enough, and now I was obsessed with the fear that, at any minute, a troupe of blue-turbaned Tuareg would pour over a dune’s crest to steal our precious Landrover.  Maybe we’d be kidnaped and held for ransom, too. This had happened to many travelers over the years.  But not to us. We reached Timbuktu well before dark.  There was room at a comfortable little hotel.  There was cold beer.  There was delicious food.

Timbuktu in the ‘90s

And so I got to meet with deeply learned scholars, who were delighted to tell tales of the good old days when Timbuku was a center of global trade.  Although most of the contents of the famous library had been carried away by invading Moroccans many centuries ago, local archives contained fascinating collections of old manuscripts and letters which were being collated and catalogued and, in some cases, translated from the original Arabic by Western-funded scholars.

Yes, there was beer, which my driver greatly appreciated.  Better yet, for me, there were women in public, few of them paying much attention to whether their hair was covered or not.  And everywhere, since this was a city that prized education, there were French speakers.  As I wandered around, people were openly curious about me but always polite, and courtesy often led to interesting conversations in French. Meanwhile, real estate was booming.  Timbuktu, as a U.N. heritage city,  was being rediscovered and refurbished. Seeing the elegant old stone houses that had already been reclaimed from near ruin, I found it possible to imagine what an imposing city this now provincial outpost had been in its heyday.

Back then, in the mid ‘90s, the worst threat that hovered over Timbuku was the desert. Dunes were encroaching.  The city was in danger of being buried in sand.  The new threat is human.  Now that Islamists are making the rules, bars are closed, music is banned and women are terrorized if they’re caught in the streets.  The politics are murky.  I don’t know the personalities or the intricacies of who has promised what to whom, but the dramatic external transformation proves that the Al Queda faction is dominant for now.

What To Do Now?

The Timbuktu I visited was gracious, gentle, in love with music and books and the great accomplishments of Muslim civilization. If such a city could be the capital of a new Muslim majority land, how promising it would be!  Given my own positive experiences and the fact of wide divergence betwen cultures, North and South, I found myself back then inclined not to dismiss the idea of endowing a nation of Azawad with sovereignty.

The bifurcation of Sudan hasn’t been easy, and harmony between the divorced will be a long time in coming.  Oil remains a divisive issue.  The new border is bitterly (and cruelly) disputed.  Within South Sudan itself there are serious tribal divisions.  Nevertheless, aside from certain Islamists and the power elite in Khartum, few would argue that the split as such was a bad idea.

Today everything in Mali has changed.  Chaos in Bamako created opportunity for the MNLA, who have fought so long for a homeland.  But here comes the irony. The average Tuareg is more conservative than the average denizan of Bamako, but I’m not so sure that most insurgents are getting the society they fought for.  Meanwhile, back in Washington, the developments in Northern Mali are probably causing more consternation than the coup in Bamako. What to do?  What to do?  In fact, whether or not we’re happy about Islamists in power above the Niger, there’s not much we can or should do, so long as their focus is purely internal.  Should they decide to ape their counterparts in Yemen, however, they should have one worry on their minds.  Drones.

When is a River Not a River?

By Patricia Lee Sharpe  


I’ve been walking along a nearly dry river lately, and I’ve had lots of company, including dogs with cold noses and cyclists who startled me because I didn’t hear them approaching on the smooth new pavement.  I’ve also encountered joggers, speed walkers, assorted chums strolling and chatting, skate-boarders and people pushing baby carriages—a microcosm of the community, in fact, some in good shape, some in need of much more walking or much less eating.
 
Visitors scoff at the Santa Fe river, especially when it has the Gobi-desert-in-miniature look.  But even when the river is more or less running—in the spring, after a big rainstorm, when water is being released from the never-quite-full-enough reservoirs upstream, the scoffers aren’t impressed. “Santa Fe trickle?” they suggest, with a sneer.  “Santa Fe dribble?” 

How Much Water Is Necessary?

When is a river really really a river?  When it’s broad and deep and has a strong flow to it, unlike those poor relations dubbed streams and creeks?  When it can’t, safely, be waded across? Is it still a river when, intermittently, it’s reduced to a few stagnating pools?  Or when it masquerades as an arroyo, even as its invisible underground perennial seepage supports a verdant, jungly sort of bosque (think of the ultra-poetic English word ‘bosky’) that snakes across a landscape of sparse scrawny vegetation? 

When it's had as little recent connection with H2O as the supposed rivers on Mars?

Northern New Mexico has a few rivers that never occult themselves.  There’s the Chama flowing into O’Keefe country from Colorado, the quick-descending Nambe River transporting snowmelt from Santa Fe Baldy, the Rio en Medio with its charming waterfalls, the Pecos River descending from the Eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.  And, of course, there’s the Rio Grande which flows to the west of Santa Fe on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, performing for 1000 plus miles its task of dividing the U.S. from Mexico. 

None of these rivers can compete with the Mississippi or the Amazon or the Nile or the Rhine, or even the Ohio, but water is the stuff of life.  Wherever it appears, in whatever form, in whatever quantity, it’s cherished.  And so, the city of Santa Fe has, little by little, over the past few years, thumbed its nose at financial bad times and extended the Santa Fe River Trail. 

When I finally got around to checking out the new portion a few weeks ago, I was impressed by the amount and quality of the work that had gone into the project.  Shortly after, as usual at this time of year, the flow was turned off.  Just in time for tourists to peer into it and guffaw, “That’s a river?” 

Why does the river get turned off? 

Pure necessity.  Dams on the river impound water for non- spiritual, non-aesthetic needs.  If the reservoirs behind those dams aren’t full enough (and the other sources upon which the city depends are equally depleted), faucets won’t flow and toilets won’t flush. Good citizens hereabouts are vigilant year round water conservators, because they are denizens of the high desert. No one ever got rich farming this land.  Not the original peoples.  Not the Spanish colonials. Today New Mexico is one of the poorest states in the union.  

Insufficient rainfall is the culprit.  Even in the wettest years there’s not enough water to maintain Eastern-style green lawns, and the most conscientious limit the frequency and duration of their showers.  I’ll confess.  I’m good about the no-lawn regimen, but pretty profligate when it comes to showering during a hot spell.

Ducks and Little Girls

Although the watershed for the reservoirs in use today are off bounds to casual hikers, to protect our water supply, such as it is, anyone can walk atop the earthen remains of a late 19th century dam and see the marshy remnant of that reservoir (photo above), now home to a quackery of ducks and a colony of beavers, who are industriously at work on their own damming. 

  This a favorite place for local bird watchers, and  a mile-long path encircling the pond connects with Santa Fe’s extensive system of urban trails.  Santa Fe is a walker’s paradise, even for those who don’t fancy hiking at the higher altitudes.

The most delightful moment during my first morning on the new portion of the  Santa Fe River Trail was encountering a little girl splashing in a pool below a newly constructed rocky step down. Although the pool was not much larger than a couple of bath tubs,  to that little girl at that moment that little catchment of water was her own special place.  She flopped.  She splashed. I was tempted to shake off my sandals and wade in, but I settled for vicarious pleasure instead.  My intrusion would have destroyed her magic. 

Re-Creating a a Proper Bosque

By the time I managed to find time for another walk along the river, there was even less of it, water-wise, and the farther I walked downstream (so to speak) the drier it got. Toward the end of the new improved trail, the river bed was completely dry, which was good, actually, for me.  I could see the extent of the new stone work, the embankments to hold spring’s rush of snow melt, the placing of rock to manage the river’s descent toward the Rio Grande, the shapely channels for runoff from an occasional gullywasher of a rain storm. Without water, it was beautiful, like sculpture.  Also visible was the well-worn old path, ducking under a brand new footbridge, leading the more adventurous on toward the Rio Grande.

Unfortunately much of the newly improved mileage is shadeless and bleak.  Too many bulldozers have been at work.  However, once all the scrupulously re-introduced local vegetation takes hold and gets to thriving again in habitat from which it was displaced by ruthless alien species, the Trail will truly fulfill its ecological as well as its recreational promise.  No more salt cedar, for instance.  This giant weed has lovely plumes of delicate pink flowers, but it needs so much water that a stand of salt cedar can dry up a small stream.  Also mostly gone: the ubiquitous Chinese or Siberian elms that were imported in the 19th century and flourished because they require amazingly little water for their size.  To replace the interlopers: hundreds of cottonwoods and river willows. It may take ten years, but a new, wholly native bosque will eventually flourish here.

Meanwhile, back in the heart of Santa Fe, the river may gurgle and burble, or it may go dry, as it is right now, but if you're walking along the heavily-shaded stretch of river, you might very well be thinking, "Desert?  What desert?"

Honeymoon in America Off the Beaten Track in and about Woodland, California, Part 2

By John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

(This is the second of a two-part photo story by John C. Dyer.  The first can be found here.) 

Davis, California

  The City of Davis is best known as the home of the University of California, Davis a world class institution. But it is also a marvelous place to visit in its own right, especially appealing to those who like a traditional city center and village atmosphere. (Photos left: "Village House" and "Detail Village Garden" by John C. Dyer, August 2011). (Photo right "City Street" by John C. Dyer, August 2011)

It is at once charmingly quaint  (Photos left: "Tea house," "Tea for Two," and  "Orange Square" by John C. Dyer, August, 2011).  

 

 

 

Davis is the home to a busy Farmer’s Market, one of the first in the modern Farmer’s Market movement, featuring entertainment as well as veggies for its many customers.  But of course, the University is never far from sight. (Photos right: "Uni student" and "Farmers Market Scene by John C. Dyer, 2011).

 You really could not make Davis up, but to the English eye it offers all that a town centre should, small local shops and restaurants, walking and biking the norm and the Unitrans double decker, vintage, iconic London Routemaster buses.  The farmers’ market is very impressive after the cholesterol loaded offerings of a much smaller market in St Annes. 

University of California, Davis

The campus of the University of California is a delight to visit.  Cork Oaks shade its central square .  Multiple sculptures intrigue the walker (Photos left: UCD campus and photos right:  Intrigue, Using Your Head and Shoe by John C. Dyer, August 2011). The campus consciously connects with England, using London buses for transport and decorating the station with an old Telephone Booth.   Putah Creek winds through campus. (Photo left: "Phone Box," by John C. Dyer, August 2011.

 UC Davis' Horticultural Heritage

The University displays its horticultural heritage with a breathtaking display of trees, plants, and flowers buzzing with bees. 

(Photos above: "Beezy," "Purple Whisps," "Pink on Pond,"by John C. Dyer, August 2011)

Photos right: "Delicacy" "Fire bush," "Redwood," "The Rose," "Trumpets," by John C. Dyer, August 2011.)

  

Labour Day saw a handful of students and very little bike action.  Two days later it was no longer safe to walk in a daydream for cyclists asserting their right to the cycle paths and young people swarming around the town and campus. We bid adieu as the students began to arrive for the Fall.

Honeymoon in America Off the Beaten Track in and about Woodland, California

By John C. Dyer, UK correspondent

(This is the first of two off-the-beaten track  photo stories by John C. Dyer.  His marriage and honeymoon took place August 2011. Several photos were taken by his wife, Victoria Buchan Dyer and are so identified.  Enjoy.)

Woodland is a long way from Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire. It is located near Sacramento in California’s huge central valley.  Probably not anyone else’s first choice for a honeymoon. But ours was delightful and rich with memory making moments. 

We chose Woodland for family. My daughter and grandchildren live there.  So does the brother of Victoria’s  American “sister.”  

I had not seen my Woodland family for some time. Victoria had never met them.  I arranged for my son to fly in from Seattle, making the occasion a family reunion.   

Victoria had not seen her “sister” (an exchange student in Victoria’s childhood home in Dorset) or her “sister’s” mother and brother in ages.

As it happened, Victoria’s brother’s daughter and my granddaughter are friends.   It was all a happy coincidence. This happy coincidence gave me the opportunity to introduce Victoria to my past haunts.

In describing our experiences to you, the toughest decisions have been what to leave out. Let’s start with my experience of trying to enter the country on a British passport.

Security

Sadly, I cannot show photos of exciting bits of our journey. Security, both at the train stations and the airports overrode our best photographic intentions.

The interesting thing was how much more cumbersome security is for a Brit entering the US than for a Yank entering Britain. I found this out by accident.  In a senior moment I thought the US Embassy had told me that I had to enter the US on my British passport.  Other way around. Before a friendly US TSA agent clarified, I had gone through an electronic Visa, 4 passport checks and 2 luggage checks. Victoria had gone through a pat down.  Coming into Britain I had just gone through one of each and no one other than Victoria touched me.  

The friendly US TSA agent also explained an unexpected benefit - as my wife, Victoria would not need a green card.   But it was not until we were safely back in Lancashire before Victoria breathed again. She kept expecting a Border Patrol agent to demand she produce a green card.  It is quite usual for a Brit entering the US to wait in line, fingers crossed hoping they will not give the wrong answer to a simple question and be immediately deported.

Sacramento 

Many tourists visit Old Sacramento, especially during Jazz Festival each May.   Old Sacramento features many fine restaurants, including the Firehouse  and the Rio City Cafe to name just two.  (Photos right "Old Sacramento" by John C. Dyer  and "Old Sacramento Exit" by Victoria Buchan Dyer, August 2011) 

We did visit Old Sacramento and ate at the Rio City Cafe, which overlooks the confluent Sacramento and American Rivers. These rivers etch Sacramento, joining just to the North of Old Sacramento.  (Photos left of "Firehouse Restaurant" and "Rio Cafe" Sacramento, CA  by Victoria Buchan Dyer, August 2011)