Habitat Destruction

I have blogged before about the unnecessary cutting and trimming of trees and plants around where we live. Lots of the trimming is done by landscapers that are employed by home owners association but these pictures are taken at a city park. I have e-mail the City of Lake Forest, sent pictures, left messages numerous times and earlier in the week I called the city and asked to speak to the manager that is responsible for the park maintenance. Well the call never got to the party I requested but I was able to speak to his secretary. She listen to my simple diatribe, my first point; the unnecessary trimming, the second point; the arbitrary law enforcement that allows five landscaper employees to ride in the front of a truck (she suggested I should contact law enforcement) and then the touchy one: how can the city afford to do these things in the middle of current financial crisis.

The telephone exchange was friendly until I mentioned illegals then I was repeatably referred to address the mater via the city web site and someone would get back to me within 5 days.

Well the next day the cutters returned and hacked the remaining plants and proceeded to cut down the cattails. They are getting better at habitat destruction as one time it took three days to cut down the cattails, then two days and now only a few hours.

I have been given explanations for the cutting of the cattails, they don't want them to spread. This seems rather lame as the cattails cannot expand as they only grown in the water that comes from the storm drain and the daily front yard run off and can not migrate and start sprouting up on the grass. The original park planners may have considered the cattail for aesthetic but their primary purpose is to treat the water and one would think a healthy growing plant would function better than one that is repeatedly chain sawed. The plants when they are allowed to flower attract many bumble bees , butterflies, humming birds now they only gather plastic bags and empty cigarettes packages.

Del Taco Pleasure Pack

Just another trash day.

Swinish Flu

I happen to have my camera with me this morning when the dog and I went out this morning. It really isn't note worthy to photograph litter but I read recently that several people have turned their blogs into money making publications. One was about how pet owners dress up their pets and how stupid they look and the other was about how dumb white folks are, so maybe a collection of photographs taken by our house is worth zillions.

Has anybody ever considered the true cost of giving out all those free condiments?

Every Day Should Be Earth Day

Unfortunately everyday is trash day.

Standing On The Corner

To leave our house you can go north, west or south. It is best to avoid going south. A drive south on Cherry Street leads you to the local border crossing where the day workers stand, sit, play cards, block the street, block the sidewalk, making it almost impossible to use any of the remaining small business and the lumber yard. Wednesday morning, the first day after several days of rain brought out enough illegals to fill lots of buses for export. Today the count was less probably only numbering between 140 to 160. As the economy here goes south the poor in Mexico go north looking for work. The less work here the less remittance sent back to Mexico where remittance from illegals is only behind Mexico's oil exports for the countries income. This results in more poverty in Mexico causing more to come here seeking a change. When I was in the auto parts store here today I saw a flier from the City of Lake Forest (California) asking for inputs on how to improve the landscaping along the street shown. Our city government is spending money trying to find out how to improve the landscaping. My first suggestion: try removing the illegals pissing on the sidewalk.

Down The Drain

We are experiencing a drought here in California. Actually the word "we" should be "some" as their are those that don't experience they just use. My son was visiting the dentist today and while waiting I did some reading but the wait grew longer than expected so I walked to a park with lots of tall shade trees. It had been a while since visiting here and the trees have grown tall unlike so many that are over trimmed. When I returned to the office the manager saw my book and asked wondering how I came about reading it. The colorful cover of I, Rigoberta Menchu AN INDIAN WOMAN IN GUATEMALA translated by Ann Wright is dog eared and worn with many pages highlighted, margin marked and is stamped Campus Connections USED BOOK and the stack of bar code labels resembled the annual tag on my Volkswagen van license plate. One previous reader has circled various words and had written in Spanish their translations (this would be the inverse for me).

In Chapter X Menchu writes the following: "We worship --or rather not worship but respect-- a lot of things to do with the natural world, the most important things for us. For instance, to us, water is sacred. Our parents tell us when we're very small not to waste water, even when we have it. Water is pure, clean, and gives life to man. Without water we cannot survive, nor could our ancestors have survived. The idea that water is sacred is in us children, and we never stop thinking of it as something pure."

To the right of our driveway is a storm drain and cross the street there is an identical drain. On the the other side of the cross street there is another drain that dumps into the park. The county workers came and cleaned the trash out of the drains last week and with the bottoms of the drains clean I can hear the water running into the drain on the other side of the street most of the day. The water in the gutters doesn't run 24/7 as most people don't water late at night just mostly during the heat of the day when they should not.


Two weeks ago there was a broken sprinkler head that went off every morning like Old Faithful spraying the property owners car in the street but they didn't seem it worth the problem to repair it. Finally I caught the neighbor in her driveway and told her about it and she had a repair person come out and correct it. About the same time I e-mailed a picture of another Old Faithful to the city with the location of the problem. This sprinkler was not on a residential line and had much more pressure and a much higher geyser. The city replied that it was the responsibility of a Home Owners Association and the city contacted them, but the repair didn't happen, I contacted the city again and they told me how to contact the Home Owners Association which I did but they didn't think it was their property and the manager called the city back. Then city inspector when back out and painted a large orange arrow on the sidewalk so the sprinkler's location could be seen but didn't repair it. The city then e-mail me back that it was really on the property of the church next to the sidewalk. Then I e-mail the church and they had it repaired. While in conversing with the city it was suggested that I call the water district about the problem and maybe they could locate the proper person for repair. I understand the city reluctance to repair the broken sprinkler located on private property and the inability of the inspector to accomplish repair as inspector just inspect. The pictures shown are from four front yards that are over watered daily and those example seem typical and were taken without walking any distance. In one photograph the hose used for additional watering can be see. All of the closest four neighbors water with an additional sprinkler attached to their hose as they somehow feel that their lawns are not getting enough water. Maybe more concern will develop when it is too late.
Previous Word Of The day


Tailback

British : a line of vehicles caused by a traffic slowdown or stoppage

More than 500 motorbike riders revved off in convoy from a service station outside Manchester at 8am and staged a "go-slow" demonstration against escalating prices at the petrol pump. Onlookers - and even those caught in the disruption - applauded in support as they sat in the major tailbacks on the M62 and M60 around Greater Manchester caused by the protest

Giving Up Golf

Giving Up Golf For The Troops

Warm weather can bring out folks in the morning that you normally don't see. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog my dog requires an early morning walk. Actually several walks a day have been requested but she often doesn't get what she wants. With the temperature reaching a hundred some days it is best to walk, jog or ride early. We usually start out from the house and make a short loop picking up plastic bottles and cans laying in the gutter or bushes across from where we live and return that load then start out again.

We pass through the park then cross over to the bicycle path that runs several miles in each direction along a creek. On Saturday morning the joggers are out in force, so are the riders and strollers. The creek doesn't have much water in it and in summer the water flow is basically run off from driveways and front yards. The water run-off doesn't travel far from the neighbors sprinklers that's aim includes the street, in enters the storm drain, crosses underneath the street then dumps into the park, flows halfway through the park, then underground again and comes out in the creek. Since California is blessed with both a finite water supply and an infinite supply of idiots the ducks continue to swim in our creek after the head waters run dry.

Maybe twice a week the dog and I venture down into the creek bed to harvest the plastic bottles, cans and golf balls that grow there. Actually the golf balls don't grow where we enter the creek bed they swim upstream about a mile from the driving range that borders the creek by the railroad tracks. These balls have escaped the horror of wild swings practiced daily by those who have not given up golf in support of out troops as our noble president has. It is easy to identify those who have escaped as they have a black prison line on them. For a long time I had surmised that the runaways relied on their own efforts until Saturday morning I saw that someone was aiding them. Not unlike discovering Santa Claus I found there was a retired couple emptying their pockets and throwing golf balls into the creek. We approached them and asked what they were doing.

The leader replied that they pick up the balls while they are walking in the morning and when they reach their turn around point they throw them in the creek. Without raising my voice and in as polite manner as possible I explained that those golf balls will eventually wind up in the ocean at Dana Point and it takes lots of effort to remove them before they make a break for the sea and added a personal request that if they need to throw golf balls they could use my driveway as my knees tend to reject climbing up and down the rocks. The leader actually said he was sorry and he would not do it again.

Actually I never started playing golf and can say I have never played the game with the exception of miniature and one visit to a driving range more than forty years ago so please don't confuse me with our president that quits but keeps playing. So I keep these striped critters jailed in a bucket where they are save from further beatings and drowings.

Previous Word of the day:

Poshlost is an untranslatable Russian word (пошлость) defined as a kind of "petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity" (Alexandrov 1991, p. 106). At more length (and with a more scholarly romanization) Boym (1994, p. 41) writes,
Poshlost' is the Russian version of banality, with a characteristic national flavoring of metaphysics and high morality, and a peculiar conjunction of the sexual and the spiritual. This one word encompasses triviality, vulgarity, sexual promiscuity, and a lack of spirituality. The war against poshlost' is a cultural obsession of the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia from the 1860s to 1960s.

"It is interesting," said Nassrin, "that Nabokov, who is so hard on poshlust, would make us pity the loss of the most conventional forms of life." (page 50)

Taken from Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

A Walk In The Park

Living across the street from a park must have some benefits. Having thought about it I never recall living so close to a park before although once in Huntington Beach we lived a block over from a site of a proposed park where we slowly watched the paint fade and peel from the sign. We finally moved to the edge of the suburbs where home owner's association supplied the fenced recreation facilities. Rather that tally the pluses and minuses whose weight would vary with ones point of view let illustrate some observations.

Lot of things get left behind there, some by those forgetful such as toys, clothing, socks and shoes. Dog waste and birthday parties are probably the most popular waste followed by a trail of fast food user, Del Taco condiments aka Mexican Manna and empty Marlboro boxes. The city subcontracts for emptying the trash containers and their effectiveness vary from not at all to just plain sloppy.

One wonders about those things left laying around that are not quite obvious . Examples such as discarded Coors Light and cans of whipped cream, or several discarded dust-off cans, plastic-sandwich bags and lots of used matchbooks. Today there was an interesting plastic water bottle that someone had poked a ballpoint pen in after removing the ink cartridge.



The picture shown is only using the SOBE bottle cap to hold the bottle upright and not part of some discarded bong laying around. In our not so distance past a food gather or hunter might have taken thousand of years to discover a tool or new way of doing something but with our technology what someone discovers today the world can know tomorrow.




Then every year March madness comes along and the basketball crowd celebrates my doing donuts with their cars between layups and free throws. Time today limits more pluses and others of being a park neighbor maybe next time I can add some more.

Previous Word of the Day

Link Rot

When an Internet link goes 404 (error: page not found) after a period of time

From Science 2.0 by M. Mitchel Waldrop in May 2008 Scientific American