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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Mariposa Zone youth choir, all twenty-one and don't hardly mind dyin'.[Click to View YouTube Video]Isaac Simpson on banjo.
[Click to View YouTube Video]Reckless, hell yeah!
Feckless? Hell no!
It's all about the fun found in friendly mountain breezes and cold-as-hell freezes and a case of cold-ass Keystone Light.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Nesters made the West
Don't take that cowboy shine
Farmers feed the rest
If you've a beef that's fine
Talk to the hand with no thumb
Gee Whiz you're dumb
I only knew one kid from El Nido (El NYE-doh) and he was Monty Smith, who died in a boating accident off in the Gulf of California, Mexico. He was there the day I got my nickname. He was twice my size in the eighth grade, and he got up to milk cows, then came into town to go to school, then went home to help clean the dairy. RIP, never-old El Monty.
Some from last June--
Next, a short piece from another student journalist, Deborah Juarez, entitled "When Substitute Teachers Go Rong."
For those who care, the publication known as We'ced is an effort to let youths express themselves journalistically. It is not edited well, but that is just dandy. They only learn from their mistakes, not others'. You need to try your wings right out of El Nido, and then the world opens up.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Gran Torino
So tenderly your story is
Nothing more than what you see
Or
What you've done or will become
Standing strong do you belong
In your skin
Just wondering
Gentle now the tender breeze
Blows whispers through
My Gran Torino whistling another tired song
Engine hums and bitter dreams grow
Heart locked in a Gran Torino
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
Realign all the stars above my head
Warning signs travel far I drink instead
On my own oh,how I've known
The battle scars and worn out beds
Gentle now a tender breeze
Blows whispers through
A Gran Torino whistling another tired song
Engine hums and bitter dreams grow
Heart locked in a Gran Torino
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
These streets are old
They shine with the things I've known
And breaks through the trees
They're sparkling
Your world is nothing more
Than all the tiny things
You've left behind
So tenderly your story is nothing more
Than what you see
Or
What you've done or will become
Standing strong do you belong
In your skin
Just wondering
Gentle now a tender breeze blows
Whispers through the Gran Torino
Whistling another tired song
Engine hums and bitter dreams grow
A heart locked in a Gran Torino
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
May I be so bold
And stay I need someone to hold
That shudders my skin they're sparkling
Your world is nothing more
Than all the tiny things you've left behind
So realign all the stars above my head
Warning signs travel far I drink instead
On my own
Oh how I've known the battle scars and worn out beds
Gentle now a tender breeze blows
Whispers through the Gran Torino
Whistling another tired song
Engine hums and better dreams grow
Heart locked in a Gran Torino
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
It beats a lonely rhythm all night long
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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hey there say, mouse... wow, lovely lovely yosemite stuff share... and the town, and merced, and such, as well...
sad, as to the loss of the young man, :( so long ago...
not all the rest of the pics showed yet, so i will be back later...
:)
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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And I hope that you did enjoy the walk through the Indian Village, neebee and everyone.
For I surely did. In my case, though, this was followed immediately by our of viewing Chris Munch's film on the YVRR, Color of a Brisk & Leaping Day. The exhibit of Indian Basketry at the Merced County Courthouse Museum is now closed, and another will be taking its place. I have several more shots of baskets from the Yosemite Museum and will be posting them as time allows.
As to the fate of my friend Monty Smith, he hung on a piece of the wreck of the boat, along with his dad, for many hours, but faded and slipped into the dark waters. Monty was the shield behind which I hid to be able to get to the opposing quarterback's flag in football during recess, thereby becoming the Mouse. Monty was special.
Like the teacher, SR. Justine, in that class, whose efforts led to my fixation on reading whatever I could get hold of. I was a lot like the historian, Shirley Sargent, I think, but not quite so desperate, like by half! It's about all she had, getting down to it, during her adolescence.
It struck me, too, that the young journalist/student Lisbeth, who wrote the El Nido piece, and many others of her kind, are just about like her, as well. In the bio that I am reading about SS, its author, Fernando Penalosa, says this about her writing:
"Shirley was proud to see her work appear in various student publications and to be complimented by fellow students on her writing. Seeing her name and work in print only reinforced her self-esteem and her determination to be an author. Without this kind of validation, it is doubtful she would have continued to write, but one should never question Shirley's persistence!"
Here is one of Shirley Sargent's poems from her days as a collegian at Pasadena City.
BLESS HIS POINTY LITTLE HEAD
My youngest son had troubles today--
Things got so tough he ran away.
Mad when he left, he was madder still
(His appearance showing he had his fill!)
When carried home by a burly cop--
His fling at freedom put to a stop.
I knew his feelings and was proud
Of the terse emotion he allowed.
My son is a stubborn seven-year-old
Who'll rarely tell, much less be told.
So all I know is a mumbled "Drop Dead!"
Bless his dear little pointed head.
And one more:
EVOLUTION
When I was a child I loved three things--
Jelly beans, corn candy, and my blue jeans.
A youngster of ten, I sought with my means
Kites, jacks, a new pair of blue jeans.
At last in my teens, I still loved three things--
Sodas, books, and a boy in blue jeans.
So now that I'm older my heart always leans
Toward my three towheads--all in blue jeans.
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Go away for a week and the world just carries on without ya.
Humbling isn't it?
This is my second attempt at this missive, having somehow deleted everything I had so intently created.
I wonder where this stuff really goes when it disappears on you.
Things we will all miss (have missed).
Mt. Lukens
Verdugo Motorway
Steaming wall paper
Raindrops fallling on my house
Chele's stamina (Mt. Lukens is a steep runup)
No evidence on the Station Fire origin to report at this time
Kevin Costner's 3-legged dog (I called him Tripod) appears to have vanished
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
Boulder climber
extraordinaire
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Owens Lake webcam today (not manipped).
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Weathermen, see?
Ground hogs at heart.
There are many kinds of rain events. This is, I feel, a nice, interesting term.
For the brain-dead zombies watching the weather.
Why so mysterious, you vane guys and girls with blue screen savvy but no real idea of what's happening without the national services.
Local weather speaks for itself; you just have to wait for it to show its hand.
I liked it better when it was a shooting match, a gamble, adventurous.
One needed preparedness, as in Boy-Scoutery, Girl-Scouting, and Campfiring.
By the same token, GPS means you don't need that compass, right?
And let's not get into pencils and paper vs. smart phones.
Cans vs. Mtn. House. Frames vs. body packs. Down vs. kapok.
Ah, the good old days. No helmets, no helmet-cams, just a pocket Rollei if you were lucky enough to find it in the jumble of gear in the rear of the van.
And a swami belt and hammer and the weight of iron.
And balls of old string you saved, for the rainy days or to recycle.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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MFM's Flames Bulletin Board.
To those who might wish to purchase any of Steve Cassady's books, including Bouncing Outside & Bridging the Gap, here is the link to find them in various places in various media.
http://www.literacy-ink.com/booksite.php
They are worth the price.
Ron Anderson--the deadmouse is still in the house. He may be arriving next week and I'll keep you posted. Thx again, Fire Marshall Rong!
A little Flames appreciation for your firefighting efforts.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California.
Laura Cunningham. Heyday Books, 2010.The Grizzly is on the cover of the text.
This is one text that the UC Merced used in one of their classes recently.
I attended the reception and listened to the talk while taking pix for Sarah's use in the Historical Society Newsletter. Of course I purchased the book, a $50.00 investment in ART and SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION. (I used my Society discount, natch.)
Heyday Books has been one of my favorite publishers since I read Malcolm Margolin's great book, The Ohlone Way, describing everyday Bay Area life among the coastal tribes, some twenty or thirty years back when I came home to roost here in Merced.
She went to them first and they ate this project up, because it's just soooo goooood! Twenty years of effort.
Another exhibit to drool over. Hope to see you if you decide to stop in for a look-see.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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MooseDroll,
The Twin Sisters in City of Rocks National Reserve are made up of different rocks. The darker sister is made of granite that is 2.5 billion years old and is some of the oldest rock in the Lower 48 states. The lighter sister (some faux-ty faux thousand tons lighter!) is made of granite from a younger formation that is 25 million years old.
Somehow, I don't make these two as sisters, man. But remember, there are (reputedly) eighty-faux thousand mo' stories in the older one's stored memory than in the younger one's. In the Naked City of Rocks, a faux-star resort near the Reserve, you can climb 5.12 all day long, if you wish, or just sit in the bar watchin'. If you can put me up there, fine. Otherwise, I'm makin' plans with Gene for Toll House. thx.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Inghams need to stick together. Laura gets that. I told her so and she automatically agreed.Coincidentally, I worked (fall & winter of '68) in the shadow of Albany Hill on San Pablo Avenue, Hwy 123, across from the El Cerrito Plaza, schleppin' burgers, fries, and chicken a la Kentucky. El cerrito = 'little hill,' amigos.
This was at The Red Barn. Just up from Galen's shop.
Just a half a mile from Cosmo's Factory on Fifth Street.
I was living some of the time with the Rev and his new bride, the missus, and then with J. Wood, bluesman.
Cooked more chicken any man ever seen.
Marco M. & Tony D./Backdoor Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5FbJ59_Xgs
Risque or Bisque, it still tastes like the henhouse in my memory--bittersweet.
From Ch. One, Golden Bear (Back in Time)
"To gain some sort of insight into how Old California "felt," I camped for several weeks in Yellowstone....
I was lucky enough to watch many [grizzly] bears for days on end, albeit as dots from the roadside [spotting scope]...
Back in California, where only the ghosts of grizzlies roam, I visited the shopping mall near my childhood home in the East Bay [El Cerrito Plaza]. Decades had passed since I visited the place...new cafe franchised, dress-for-less stores, and pet supply centers, all built in a style that might be called desert Tuscan. I stood on ground I had walked on as a child, the parking lot where I had learned to drive, and yet only the view of Albandy Hill and the bayshore remained somewhat similar to my memories....
At the nursery where my sister Margot works, I talked with a volunteer who was busy potting seedlings.
"All the shopping plazas look alike now," I commented.
Gordon responded, "Yeah, and I remember playing in El Cerrito Plaza when it was all fields."
this was the mall I had just revisited. I was caught by surprise as I found a living link to the history of a place I had only known as blacktop.
He told us stories of how, as a boy in the 1940s, he had collected frogs and stickleback fish in the creek that ran through the fields...
"They started to build the old mall in the 1950s--built the parking lot right up to the old creek...."
I went back and 'field walked' the area as an archaeologist would, looking for artifacts. Sure enough, there were relicts. An old, spreading live oak grew out of the courtyard of a dentist's office; the creek still ran there, out of a pipe now, with houses on the other bank and English ivy lining my side. A few willows held onto their dirt-bank existence. I evern found sticllebacks in a pool farther west, near the bayshore, freeways arching overhead."
The place which we came to in 1953 in North Sacramento, near Arden and El Camino, was in this exact same mode in that time. The old scene of huge clumps of oaks and an unlimited vista of the Sierra Nevada had been replaced by the shopping mall there, home to Lucky Market, Rhodes department store, Walgreen's drugs, and the vast parking lot, where they held sports car rallies on weekends, roping off the course and it was free for the watching, just guys using their free time and the free asphalt.
East of us, and south of the American River lay hundreds of acres of dredged cobbles, laid in rows by gold mining concerns earlier in the century.
We -inghams got to stick together. I found a guy living here in the Tioga, several years back, who claimed to have grown up out that direction, in Arden Park, and Del Paso Manor, and he told me that it's all ghetto, with no further elaboration. I don't wanna go back, Jack.
Merced's all I need. It's been more like Fresno every day for the last forty years, anyway.
"You take Clovis, I'll take San Berdoo, ain't no difference between the two.
No sweet refrain, run all round my brain."--Day Van Romp
http://www.browercenter.org/exhibition/cunningham/info
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Bully!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taconite
Today.
A voice of today, connected to the recent past, like Gordon, Laura's friend.
Same as it ever was? Think again.
Seasons of a vernal pool. Oil on toned cotton rag paper,ll X 9 inches. 2007.
Winter: purple needlegrass bunches are green, as the pol is full of water. Ducks [non-smokers], black-necked stilts, and spadefoot toad tadpoles inhabit it.
April: the pool is ringed by wildflowers, goldfields, downingia, lupine, meadow foam, blennosperma.
Summer: heat [and wind]has parched the pool, but a new plant greens up--little Orcutt grass. Pronghorn antelope come to dine on it.
Dingus Milktoast,
as was discussed earlier in this long-ass thread, the mima mounds of the local variety are explained here at length.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mima_mounds
"Sometimes called hog wallows, vernal pools fill with rainwater in the winter, then dry up in the summer hear. Hardpan, claypan, or volcanic mudflow substrates trap the water in these little basins.
At one time, there may have been about four million acres of vernal pools in the state--in central California, the Coast Ranges, the Delta, the Sierra foothills, along the coast from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara, in the Transverse Ranges, and over to the eastern Sierra and the Modoc Plateau. Whole communities of plants and animals developed to fill this habitat....
Because grazing livestock can increase the richness and cover of native annual wildflowers around vernal pools, as well as the number of aquatic invertebrates, range ecologists Randall Jackson and James Bartoleme think these green habitats might have been especially adapted to the large herds of tule elk they attracted.
A great diversity of small crustaceans, such as ostracods, copepods, and fairy shrimp (anostracans) inhabit these temporary pools. Millions of individuals might swim about in a single pool when the rains filled it. As the pool evaporates they enter a "cyst" stage of eggs buried in the dried sediment. In this phase of life they could, like dormant seeds, survive for decades--possibly centuries--until the next pool formed.
Massive steam combines [and the 'gang plow' made by the Holt Brothers of Stockton, and countless nesters, we thank you all, but realize change is inevitable], pulled by as many as three dozen draft animals, leveled many San Joaquin Valley hog wallows and mima mounds during the whet boom of the 1880s. Statewide, from 60 to 90 percent have been lost.
Development continues the damage (see www.biologicaldiversity.org for more information), but preservation and restoration efforts are yielding hopeful results.
Ecologists are realizing that vernal pools are not isolated bits of habitat, but rather embedded with complex landscapes and connected to other habitats, such as upland grasslands, marshes, and riverine communities. Bees in the Family Adrenidae, for example, specialize in pollinating only downingia, blennosperma, meadow foam, and other showy vernal pool wildflowers.
These bees are the dominant pollinators, and thus a key to the wildflowers' reproduction, and because they nest in small holes in the ground in grasslands sometimes a mile away from a vernal pool, they link these habitats."
--from pages on California Grasslands, A State of Change
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zBrown
Ice climber
Brujo de la Playa
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Bears! Please wipe your feet and use potty machines outside.
or you may wind up like this fellow on the pole
It's hard to solve an equation with so many unknowns, so, if you recognize yourself in this photo please notify the Mouse de Merced, via neebee's new high speed connection.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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It is common to be smart and to be stupid.
http://www.academia.edu/624021/The_Difference_Between_Being_Smart_Educated_and_Intelligent
Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid is the name of a book in the above article (a fifteen minute read worth every second and, one might hope, sharing with your spouses and partners AND children).
The central character in this book that many of these lessons regarding being "both smart and stupid” revolve around is Bill Clinton.
Lincoln was an auto-didact. Honest Abe freed the slaves.
Bill Clinton was a political genius. He got all the raves.
Hillary is smart, but who is smarter yet?
Is it Chelsea who'll turn out to be the wisest Clinton yet?*
A very "interesting" question about a "nice" family.
*You come up with a better rhyme, blood. I've done my time listening to yo' stupid raps.
rSin, Godspeed with the hernia operation today. Peace, tranquility, serenity NOW! And good luck with the medical system now you've finally gotten in the door.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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[Click to View YouTube Video]
Wurster Hall is not big on bamboo.But there are many Chinese who study here, nonetheless. Pandaring.
[Click to View YouTube Video]Twenty rock climbers employed in this structure!!!! It's no longer there. Ephemeral nature of grass, I suppose.
norwegian is saving beer cans for his pet proj, extolling the urban sprawl of Kyburz.
zBrown's lookin' good today!!!!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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For Four Thousand Simoleans I'd...
give a guided tour of my summer place in Lower Backistan, popularly called the Elephant Laughter House.
[Click to View YouTube Video]Stimulating architecture, home to generations of mice and other critters.
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