SWCAMBORNE

We were in Ashland, Oregon over the weekend for a wedding and the air was hazy. We were told that it was a result of a wild fire still burning in the Trinity National Forest. It had burned we were told more than ten thousand acres.  Wild Fires and forest fires get lots of play in the news because among other things they are scary when they threaten people and houses, the firefighters are extremely brave and the fires create great photos opportunities.

The implication in the news is often that a fire is extremely devastating. One way reporters give this impression is by breathlessly reporting the number of acres burned.  “Six hundred acres burned” sounds much worse than one square mile but they are the same area.  For some perspective the United States contains about three and a half billion acres.  Ten thousand acres is three tenthousandths of a percent of the total country.

Wild fires are scary and should be reported but they do not really threaten the well being of our country or our communities.  They are a local phenomenon that gets good publicity.

“Why don’t they have waiters in waiting rooms?”

George Carlin

1937 – 2008

We are well into the election season and I along with others was lamenting the length and cost of the process in the US. In Europe, it seems, campaigns are only a month or two long. A short election cycle sounds like a good idea but as I thought about it I realized it has a flaw. In a two month campaign we could elect a slick talking but dangerous person like John Edwards. In a one or two year campaign it is a lot harder for people with bad ideas or just smoke and mirrors to get through all of the hurdles. So the permanent campaign may be a price we have to pay to select the people most likely to be able to run the country.

This was a new phrase to me that exactly explains how drivers need to think when lanes are merging on freeways. An example of usage “Drivers in Pennsylvania need to learn to zipper merge.”

Thanks to Rebecca B. for this one.

Good Article from Atlantic Monthly.

Funny Stuff:

NoBama.com

Equal Time:

John McSame 

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

1856 – 1941

When smoking was banned in restaurants people who opposed the ban warned that this was the beginning of even more government intrusions into peoples lives.  Now it has happened. California has banned trans-fats in restaurants.  They say they, whatever they are, are unhealthy.  The Nanny State has expanded again.  Legislators in California have decided that they know better than you what you should eat.  I have three words for the legislators “Leave Me Alone.”

Freedom is more likely to be eroded by well meaning governments than stolen by tyrants.

If you live in California email you elected officials and tell them this is Nanny State behavior and should be stopped.

Here is a link to an album of photos from our trip up the coast to Carmel last weekend.

One of the highlights was our anniversary dinner at the Pacific Edge Restaurant that Nurit organized. It serves wonderful food in a magnificent setting. You are literally at the top of a cliff above the Pacific.

On Friday we visited Moss Landing and didn’t take any pictures. We then drove down to Salinas and visited the Steinbeck Museum.

It appears that it is hard to organize a museum around an author. Suffice it to say that even though I have been a big Steinbeck fan for many years we weren’t captured by the museum.

On Saturday we drove down Highway One through Big Sur and stopped to look at Morro Bay.

What a beautiful State we live in. See the entire album here

The Carmel Bach Festival is an incredible enterprise. It has lots of volunteers and much of its revenue comes from donations. It is subsidized by the city and the county to some small extent and yet it charges for tickets at about the same rate as Garth Brooks. In 22 days they put on more than 120 events.

We went to a performance of the Brandenburg Concertos which was excellent. It was made even better by a lecture we attended before the concert. In the lecture David Gordon talked for an hour about Bach, his era and how the concertos came to be. We wanted to learn more. And then it was upstairs to the concert

All of the musicians were excellent but the standout to me was Edwin Huizinga, a great big guy who played a beautiful violin.

The concert and its structure made me ask a big question. Why is it that older people who like classical music won’t pay for it directly, while Garth Brooks fans who have much less money on average will attend his concerts in such numbers that they can pay everyone involved plenty of money?  It appears that music fans are voting with their dollars for the new music over the old.  Since the invention of the printing press almost no one attneds the recitation of epic poems anymore.  Change is.

Speaking of birthday gifts. Way back in May I had bought Nurit tickets to the Carmel Bach Festival for our anniversary weekend. I organized a room and dinner with our friends John and Mary C. It turned out beautifully. The hotel was excellent the meals were delicious and the Brandenburg Concertos were wonderful.

If you think about it I got a twofer a birthday gift for Nurit and our anniversary celebration. Thirty-second for those of you keeping score.

John and Mary C in Italy 2004

We drove up to Carmel on Wednesday during the day and had dinner with John and Mary C. that night. It is about a six hour drive up highway 101 with a stop for In-n-Out in Santa Maria. The weather was perfect. We love the golden hills with the oaks on them. In fact Nurit realized that we didn’t have a painting of them and so we had a theme for our trip. We looked at about twenty galleries for a picture that captured our vision of rolling hills with oaks. We didn’t quite find it but we had a wonderful time searching.

Golden hills

with oaks

one of the closest paintings

I’m going to do another post about the festival and build an album on flickr of the trip photos.  Life is good.