SWCAMBORNE

I’m reading Aftershock the very good new book by Philippe Legrain. It address the question of what will happen next now that the immediate crisis caused by the housing bubble in the US and the UK has subsided.

Ironically I’m using a Zimbabwe One Hundred Trillion Dollar note as a bookmark while reading this book about the failure of central banks and regulators.  It is worth reading if you can find a copy.  It is not available in the US yet but you can buy a used copy or a Kindle version from Amazon.com/UK.  Legrain sees the future well enough that he predicted last year  that the banks in Ireland were ripe for failure.  The book is full of this type of sensible extrapolation.

I heard about Legrain because he wrote a very good immigration book a few years ago.  Immigrants Your Country Needs Them

One of the Parkway Oaks in front of our house was dying and the City Forestry Department removed it.  They left the stump for a few days and somebody put a Garden Gnome on it.  This is my second mystery this month. Click here to read about the other one.

I suspect it was one of the neighbors.  It might be good luck in Cleveland or Newcastle or some other foreign land to put a Gnome on a stump.

Thanks to whoever put it there.  I will attempt to return the favor.  Could this be the start of The Wynn Road Gnome Wars?

This is my only other mention of gnomes on the blog, even though my garden is swarming with them

The Changing Boundaries Map Exhibit that I curate is going to be at the CAREM museum in Tecate, BC, Mexico in October.

Read the rest of this entry »

In our family room we have a beautiful round glass sculpture.

A few weeks ago we were moving the furniture around and when I went to pick up the sculpture it started to fall apart.  My first thought was that I had broken it.  But then I noticed that it was taped together on the back.

The break was clean and I was able to repair it with clear epoxy.

And now it is a good as new.  The mystery is: Who broke it and then attempted to cover (tape) it up.

The people who had access are: Nurit and I, Rebecca and Lillian, Sonia and Jenny the old and new cleaning ladies and Jason who house sits when we are away.

The suspect would be someone who feared that we would yell at them for an accident so attempted to cover it up.  A few months ago Sonia quit suddenly claiming that I was yelling at her about the cat litter.  So she is the prime suspect but there is no evidence.  The sad thing is that when we discovered the break we laughed and then fixed it.  It is, after all, only stuff.

I apologize for creating the illusion that I am a person who would yell about something breaking and I’ll attempt to be more mellow in the future.

On the Big Sur coast we saw little white specks on the water:

It turned out that it was a flock of white sea birds.  Gulls, Terns or a mystery bird to be named later.

In the digital age you hardly need binoculars anymore.

Even the Democrats in the California Legislature couldn’t bring themselves to vote for this Nanny State Ban on Plastic Bags.  The LA Times thinks it was defeated by plastic industry lobbying.  I think it was defeated by millions of people taking a stand for a convenient product that does no more harm than many others.  Anyway without plastic bags how would we pick up dog poop?  My previous story on this Nanny State overreach.

Leave us alone.

Note to California Assembly:

“Don’t use the power of government to force us to live the way you choose.”

In Pasadena a construction site often has a Port-a-Potty and it looks like this:

In Carmel we saw this one:

We aren’t sure if the camo is for disguise, hunting or insulation.  There is an opportunity here for an enterprising person to seriously upgrade the look of portable toilets.  Think thrones, trees and gas stations.  They don’t have to be cheap plastic any more.

There was a tree with yellow flowers at the Carriage-House Inn where we stayed in Carmel.  I took these great pictures of it.

Good subject, good camera.  Life is good.

When we were in Italy in May I took some pictures of  the ubiquitous trash bins and featured them in a popular blog post The Bins of Italy.  We just toured the Paso Robles wine district of California and they have bins also.

Paso Robles

Cambria

Of course they don’t have as many yet.  But it is a new district and they are aspiring to catch up.

One of the worlds great drives is US Highway one from Carmel south to Cambria.  Even on a day when the weather isn’t perfect, the drive is magnificent.

At the second big bridge

The hard to find waterfall

My best bridge shot

Lots of construction but few delays

Art shot

We set off from Carmel about noon and arrived in Cayucos by 3.30 pm.  On the way we stopped and took pictures of the bridges and the elephant seals. We had an early dinner with our friends who have a super condo there and were home by nine.  California is a great place to live.

Rebecca has an idea to turn the section of Highway One from Cambria to Carmel into a toll road like 17 Mile Drive.  It would tax the tourists and let the locals continue to drive free.  Good Idea!