Hot yard and a humming Chevy truck

8/17/2020

By Michael Raffety

About a year ago I asked a local nursery about Leylandi cypress. I was told they don’t grow here. I thought that was weird, because I had leylandi cypress in my backyard that are taller than my house. In fact, they can be seen from the road down below.

I had planted them to screen the backyard. I had to hire a tree service to trim the branches away from my power line and away from the roof. Then eventually we began to worry about them as a fire hazard. So, we hired a tree service to cut them down.

It turned out the sawdust was very pitchy. I had parked my truck down the hill to make room for the tree service truck and chipper. If I had known what would have happened with the sawdust I would have moved my wife’s car downhill also.

It took a lot of car washes and special anti-pitch spray cans from the auto parts store to smooth out the surface and windshield. I still need to do some special polish.

Anyway, the car is closely back to normal.

The backyard now looks kind of hot. My pink camelia tree looks kind of pathetically alone and slightly baked. Of course, I won’t have to blow off the sprigs of cypress that were always falling on my Zen garden.

I still need to remove some of the larger sections of cut-up cypress from the backyard. Once I carry those out, I can get access to the irrigation line. When it cools off in the fall my plan is to plant Japanese maples behind the large boulders that provide the background for my Zen garden. That will be more in line with Japanese Zen garden.

I’ve already picked up most of the medium sized logs. As the larger ones dry out they will get lighter and I can move those out as well.

. . .

Often Sunday is family dinner day. We have my daughter and son-in-law and their small tribe of boys over for dinner. We had to add the extra section to the table because it was my daughter’s birthday, which meant my son, daughter-in-law and son would be up for dinner as well.

My son is 6-foot 8 inches. Every time I stand next to him in a photo I look like a midget. I’m 6-foot-3 inches. In a groundbreaking photo for a new pumping replacement project from Folsom Lake I was the tallest person in the photo. But stand next to my son, whose college team went to the NCAA championships and I look skinny and small.

My son’s threesome arrived early. He brought with him a rebuilt carburetor to install along with a new vacuum advance. That was the final link getting the fuel from the gas tank to the carburetor. With a little starter spray the ‘46 Chevy truck coughed and then began to hum – at last. It was working great until we saw some steam. That’s when we figured out the fan belt had broken and the radiator overflow was sending out the steam.

Until the fan belt broke we were high-fiving each other, clapping and cheering. Sometime this week or next I’ll buy a fan belt and install it. Now that engine runs I can rent a trailer and haul it down to my son’s house in Stockton.

The Berlin Wall, liberating a famous beer town and faithless electors

4-25-2020

By Michael Raffety

It’s always fun when my wife brings some yellowed copy of an old Mountain Democrat editorial page she found as she is cleaning out old boxes in the garage so she can park the car inside.

This particular page was from Monday, Dec. 12, 1988. I forgot we had columnists Andy Rooney and Mike Royko in this edition. I also recall we used to have Bob Green and Louis Rukeyser also.

We had some topnotch must-read columnists.

My Belltower column in this particular edition had the headline “Shifting winds in Eastern Bloc may bring out the truth.”

Only a year later the wall came down as East Germany allowed its residents to visit the West Berlin and 2 million flooded through Checkpoint Charlie. Two years after this column Germany was reunited as one country.

At that time I spent a lot of time hunting up a quote to begin my column. The quote for that column was “And that’s the world in a nutshell – an appropriate receptacle – Stan Dunn”

Boy, that sure applies to our current affairs, especially when looking at nut cases like Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B Pritzker of Illinois, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

The truth my Dec. 12 column wrote about was who liberated Plzen, Czechoslovakia (since broke up into two countries) in World War 11. Local retired commercial photographer Erik Petersen was a tank driver in Gen. George Patton’s 16^thArmored Division of the Third Army when they drove the Nazis out of Plzen May 3, 1945. They halted 40 miles east of Plzen to wait for the German Garrison at Prague to surrender to the Americans instead of the Russians. On May 8, Germany surrendered. Patton’s 16^th Armored Division remained in Plzen until Sept. 17. During that time the town put up a plaque thanking Patton’s 16th Armored Division and likewise the 16^th also put up a plaque to commemorate their victory.

The mischief began later when the Soviet Communists took control of Czechoslovakia and they claimed to have “liberated” Plzen. Erik was indignant when he saw a National Geographic magazine say the Russians liberated Plzn. He knew better, because he had been there in person with Patton’s 3^rd Army. He wrote the National Geographic and I took up his cause. Erik eventually prevailed and by that time Czechoslovakia was freed from the Iron Curtain and welcomed Erik Petersen back. The celebration of liberation day by the 16^th Armored Division turned into and annual event with Czechs restoring old Jeeps and dressing up in uniforms. Petersen eventually got a group of buddies to join him, including one of Patton’s grandsons. Erik was always feted by being at the head of the parade. The bronze plaques were recovered also.

Plzen is famous for its beer, which is now owned by Anheuser-Bush in-Bev.

The editorial in the same edition was about the Electoral College. Each state’s number of electors equals the number of U.S. senators and representatives, thus giving small states a voice in choosing the president. This was set up during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. If we chose the president by popular vote presidential campaigns would concentrate on California, New York and Florida, resulting in those states choosing a president.

Three presidents won the Electoral College but not the popular vote: Donald Trump in 2016, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and Ruther Hayes in 1876. Should there be a tie vote in the Electoral College or no candidate receives a majority, then it goes to the House of Representatives, with each state’s delegation casting a single vote. In 1800 Aaron Burr and Tomas Jefferson each received 73 electoral votes (There was no popular vote then). It took 36 ballots to finally elect Jefferson. Again in 1824 the House chose John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson.

State laws require the electors to vote in accordance with the popular vote. The issue of unfaithful electors was recently argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. I’m betting against elector independence. That would be chaos.

Early birds, beaches, store openings and layoffs

5-11-2020

By Michael Raffety

When Cherie and I toured the Newport, R.I., mansions about a dozen years ago, one of the things we liked about downtown Newport was the Early Bird Specials in restaurants.

If you were ready to eat dinner at 4 p.m. then you got a discounted price. We had lobster, of course. Lobsters, scrod and Arctic whitefish were some of the best meals we had in Rhode Island. Lobster is the universal all-purpose meal in New England.

For our early bird special I chose double lobster, which is really a kind of Siamese twins of lobster.

I mention this not because I think anyone is going to serve lobster in El Dorado County, but my suggestion is for restaurants to promote an early bird special, especially to attract seniors to your restaurant. This is one way to draw out of their houses people who may have gotten used to “sheltering in place” and have developed COVID-19 agoraphobia.

Fresh fruit and vegetables draw me out to the store several times a week. I usually shop right after the stores open at 6 a.m. just because I’m an early bird. El Dorado County is one of the safest places in the state. The only place safer is Modoc County, which has no Corona Virus cases. I went with Cherie when she was president of the California Association of Treasurer Tax Collectors and the Modoc treasurer and tax collector was retiring. With a population of about 10,000 Modoc is mostly wide-open spaces, including the county seat of Alturas. I noticed two things about the town: 1. The new car dealer’s cars were covered with dust and 2. We had a fabulous Basque dinner for the retirement party.

On May 3 the Sacramento Bee touted “the capital region” as having the lowest infection rate among cities of 2 million and above. Of course, almost any city looks like a paragon of safety next to New York and New Jersey. The Bee lowered Sacramento’s down to 53^rd with 62 cases per 100,000 by including the ultra-low infection areas of Placer and El Dorado counties. The fourth county is Yolo, which has a high infection rate because of a skilled nursing facility in Woodland.

The big brouhaha in Orange County is over the governor ordering the Newport Beach closed. When I got a mini vacation from Navy bootcamp in San Diego I traveled to Newport Beach to learn surfing. Because I didn’t have my glasses on I drifted over to the swimming area and was warned off by the lifeguard.

When I saw the photograph of the Newport Beach in the newspaper, I knew there was going to be trouble. The real trouble was the photographer used a telephoto lens, probably a 300mm lens. In other words he gave an exaggerated view of the people at the beach. But I could tell even from that compressed perspective that the beach goers were appropriately separated. A later aerial view confirmed how spread out they were.

Nevertheless the telephoto lens view clearly shocked the governor who immediately ordered the Newport Beach closed, but not beaches in San Diego and Ventura counties. Orange County beach cities sued the governor. Sue Gov. Newsom and stage a demonstration and he will accuse you of spreading the virus and prolonging the lockdown. Finally, though, the governor and Huntington Beach reached a deal May 5 for reopening the beach for surfing, running and walking (no sunbathing).

Monday, May 4, though, the governor said he would open up some businesses at an announcement Friday, May 9. Those businesses include manufacturing and logistics firms, clothing stores, florists, sporting goods, music, toy and bookstores.

Offices and dine-in restaurants will be in a later stage 2.

As quoted from NPR news: “Newsom emphasized that the modifications announced Monday were not one size fits all; as the pandemic continues, some counties may need restrictions and other regions may be able to move forward, he said.

“We are not telling locals that feel it’s too soon, too fast to modify,” he said. “We believe those local communities that have separate timelines should be afforded the capacity to advance those timelines.”

Sacramento County, which has two doctors – one a health officer and one a health director – agreed to let patients visit dental offices for “preventive services.” That sound like teeth cleaning to me. Sac County is also opening boat ramps, shooting and archery ranges.

The joint health director for Yuba and Sutter counties allowed gyms, hair solons and tatoo parlors to open May 4. The two counties have a total of 50 virus cases between them and three deaths. Newsom has put hair salons, barbershops and gyms in his stage 3 –-“months away.” Those small one- and two-person operations can’t survive another month or two.

May 1 the Bee Business section listed big employers sending people to the unemployment lines: 110 from Folsom Lake Toyota, 93 from Serrano Country Club, 439 from CarMax dealerships, 155 from Burlington Coat Factory, 247 from Western Dental services, 315 from VSP insurer and eyeglass maker in Rancho Cordova, 158 from Arden Hills Country Club, 88 from Iron Mechanical construction contractor, 31 from Core Power Yoga. Aramak in Yosemite National Park laid off 1,828.

No wonder the governor says we’re heading for a recession.

 

 

 

 

 

Newsom emphasized that the modifications announced Monday were not one size fits all; as the pandemic continues, some counties may need restrictions and other regions may be able to move forward, he said.

“We are not telling locals that feel it’s too soon, too fast to modify,” he said. “We believe those local communities that have separate timelines should be afforded the capacity to advance those timelines.”

 

Tuna melts and the need to open barbershops

4-27-2020

By Michael Raffety

Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham expressed horror at a dad who made tuna melts for his family during the shelter-in-place, otherwise known as the lockdown.

That was a subject that came up during an Easter Zoom call with my daughter and son. They all missed my tuna melts. I’m not talking about a tuna melt sandwich like you might order at a lunch counter during a bus stop.

A real tuna melt would have Tilamook cheese, a tomato and bacon, all broiled in the oven. I learned these melts from my mom. I really loved them and my kids love them too. Hannity and Ingraham don’t know what they are missing.

So, other than tuna melts what have we been up to during the lock down?

First of all, once you realize there is extremely light traffic all the way down Highway 50 to the Capital City interchange and casino gas is less than $2 a gallon, one has to ask what can be accomplished before the Tin Man, aka our governor, quits equivocating and opens up the economy?

Well, No. 1, I traveled to the Sacramento Airport to get a Pre TSA qualification so I don’t have to stand in a long line to take off my shoes and belt and lap top, which once got confused with someone else who had the same laptop. In the past it was somewhat random about getting Pre TSA. Sometimes my wife and I both got it, but sometimes only one of us got it. Now we’ve got it guaranteed for five years.

Terminal B at the Sacramento Airport was an absolute ghost town. The other thing I did that I had been putting off was get our car serviced in Elk Grove where we bought it and had a prepaid service plan.  The servicing was a lot quicker, especially since there were fewer customers. But I found Highway 99 more crowded than Highway 50.

The quick service was something I noticed at Thompson Dodge-Jeep in Placerville. I could get an appointment the next day and when I pulled into the service lane there was not a big line of vehicles ahead of me.

I’m thankful our governor has allowed auto repair, hardware stores and even Office Max to remain open. Other states have closed hardware stores and when they open them in phase 1 you’ll have to call in your order and pick it up at curbside. I’ve visited Home Depot twice and True Value several times just because it has things one can’t find at Home Depot. I’ve even visited Office Max twice. When organizing things or doing a lot of printing there are essential supplies.

What else can a person do on lockdown except organize things? Even though some of my regional meetings are virtual I still need to print out the rather lengthy agendas for my newly organized notebooks with dividers.

I look with envy on Georgia where the governor in phase 1 of reopening allowed barbershops and beauty parlors to reopen. I watch all the women on Fox News and it is clear they need haircuts as their hair gets longer and longer each week. My hair is heading for the length it was when I was in college. It just doesn’t look as good at my age as it did when I was 26. 

Coronavirus stories and a golden oldie

By Michael Raffety

3-30-2020

I forget where saw it but the funniest thing I saw was a table of guys playing five-card stud for toilet paper rolls.

I like watching President Trump’s corona virus press conferences. He seems to be having them daily but there is always something new and interesting to learn from him and his medical experts and vice-presidential task force.

I also like watching New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press conferences. He is very precise and notes that the president has follow-upped on every promise. He does whine about the federal government not helping with his state budget. Hey, cut back spending, cut back bureaucrats.

There is only so much news I can handle, so in my truck I have my satellite radio tuned to Johnny Carson reruns.

Here’s a story that didn’t make the Mountain Democrat as more routine stuff gets crowded out by Corona virus stories:

The Soroptimist International of Placerville and the Mother Lode Lions Club presented checks totaling $3,566.99 March 5 following a photo session with El Dorado County Sheriff John D’Agostini and the two club presidents – Soroptimist President Lynne Rogers and Lions President Michael Raffety.

The money was raised for the family of Deputy Brian Ishmael, who was ambushed and killed in the line of service in Somerset last year.

The two clubs held a joint fundraiser for the Ishmael family Dec. 15 that included doll and gift sales, food sales of hot dogs and hamburgers and a donation jar.

Rogers and Raffety thank the community for the support of their fundraiser. The checks will be forwarded from the Sheriff D’Agostini directly to Katie Ishmael.

While “sheltering in place” my wife started cleaning out a few old files, including an old calendar that had a schedule for our son Wolfgang that included Sugarloaf Arts and Music Camp and Vacation Bible School. She also found a column I wrote in 1987. At that time it was a weekly column and I always hunted up a quote to start the column:

“Personalities and balconies tend to be hereditary” 9-28-1987

Nothing is said that has not been said before.

Terence (185-159 B.C.)

Being an adopted child, I’ve always taken parenthood as a straightforward proposition: kids are a responsibility and a joy and one must try to do the best job possible raising them. My parents and my wife’s parents did a pretty good job with us, so a lot of their concepts and traditions are handed down through the next generation.

What I hadn’t figured on was the mystery of genes. As I watch my daughter grow, I’m continually amazed at how much like her mother she is. Her personality is outgoing and her face always has a smile. I first met my wife at a Big Brothers and Sisters meeting. We were the only single people there and director Max Hand quickly matched us up. I still have a dark and fuzzy Polaroid from that evening. It matches the snapshot my mind shows me when I recall talking to an enthusiastic person who never stopped smiling.

My daughter has that same enthusiastic smile. She had almost from the day she was born. I have a dozen photos of her smiling when she was only two weeks old. She could really thrill the grandparents and later my Uncle Tom from Austin, Texas.

And now my 2-year-old son seems to reflect much of myself. And that’s the thrill and intrigue of genes. It could have been the other way around.  My daughter could have been more like me and my son more like his mother or some sort of half-and-half mix, but it seems to be a boy-man, girl-woman kind of hereditary matchup.

For most of his first year he rarely smiled. He was a serious baby and we wondered about his attitude toward life. By now he’s quite giggly when in the company of family and friends. He’s also adventuresome and ready to go anywhere and do anything.

My mother tells me I was very serious and quiet when she got me at age about 2. My recollection is she always attributed it to malnutrition and the depressing demands of survival in postwar, blockaded Berlin. As I watch my son, I think now it was simply the personality I was born with.

Our house in Berlin had a balcony overlooking the living room and I’m told it was my favorite place. My present house has a balcony overlooking the living room and it is one of my son’s favorite haunts.

Genes show up in familiar and peculiar places.

Thank you notes

3-2-2020

By Michael Raffety

Thank you to the Northern California Innocent Project out of Santa Clara College along with its attorney Melissa O’Connell. The group worked on the Ricky Davis case and found someone else’s DNA on the nightgown of Jane Anchor Hylton, who was murdered in El Dorado Hills in 1985. Ricky Davis spent 15 years in prison convicted on Hylton’s murder.

Thank you for Judge Kenneth Melikian for finding Davis “factually innocent “and expunging the arrest record. The judge also advised him the law allows him to seek monetary recompense for the 15 years he spent in prison as an innocent man.

Thank you for District Attorney Vern Pierson admitting that detectives used questionable methods in interviewing a witness in prison in Oregon. Pierson also praised the Innocent Project’s work on the Ricky Davis case. One always appreciates a DA that truly aims for justice.

Thank you to the DA and Sheriff’s Department for arresting the man who apparently matches the mystery DNA – Michael Green, 51, in Placer County.

I knew of Jane Anchor as a columnist for a newspaper my late father-in-law ran in Cameron Park for several years to help promote the shopping center he built there.

Thank you to Recorder-Clerk Janelle Horne for setting up an indoor wedding space with seating for 25 for those who want a quick “Courthouse Wedding” and maybe don’t want to be married among the rubber plants and trees of the atrium of Building B and don’t want to travel all the way to South Lake Tahoe to one of the wedding chapels. Good idea, Jannelle.

Thank you to the Placerville Police for arresting an El Dorado High School teenager who threatened to “shoot up the school.”

Thank you to New Morning Executive Director David Ashby for your 23 years of service and raising funds to move its youthful wards in to a bigger house. Ashby’s not the first director of New Morning and not the last, but certainly one of the most consequential. New Morning helps runaways, often unwanted youths and foster care castaways. The organization has counselors and helps bring troubled youths into the mainstream of life and school.

Thank you to Cameron Park Safeway floral manager Michaela Freeman for her huge Valentine’s Day display. I happened to walk into that Safeway Feb. 11 on my was back from a water association committee meeting in Sacramento. Right near the main entrance I had to walk through a big Valentine archway promoting the floral department and Valentine balloons. Hard not to be inspired.

Thank you to the Sacramento Bee for dropping its Saturday paper (as of Feb. 22). Buying it in the store was like getting a half-baked Sunday paper and paying as much as the Sunday paper but not getting all the same sections, just some of them. The announcement was made Sunday, Feb. 16, on the front page of the Local section. Making the announcement was Lauren Gustus, editor of the Bee and McClatchy’s regional editor for the West. That’s customarily an announcement made by the publisher. They may not have a publisher. McClatchy Co. filed for bankruptcy. The company is likely to emerge from bankruptcy owned by hedge fund. McClatchy’s financial downfall was acquiring Knight Ridder in 2006, leaving them with $4.5 billion in debt that sank the bloated organization like concrete shoes in the Sacramento River. Even Editor Gustus noted that the newspaper decline started in 2005 (a year before buying all the Knight Ridder newspapers). Heck, it began earlier than that as Craig’s List completely depleted classified newspaper ads. McClatchy’s stock plunged from $496 in 2006 to 75 cents. A better deal for 75 cents is an issue of the Mountain Democrat.

 

Paper mills and earlier recollection of Michigan Cal lumber company

2-21-2020

By Michael Raffety

I received the following request from retired attorney Phil Berry:

“I request that the mountain Democrat publish a correction to erroneous information in Michael Raffety’s column in the Feb. 3 edition.

“Mr. Raffety stated “There are 678 paper mills in California.” This is an erroneous and misleading number. That would be approximately 10 “paper mills” in California for every single county. I have no idea where that number came from. Perhaps it is the number of companies in California, such as El Dorado Disposal, which accept paper from consumers.

”I remember that a recent insert In the Mountain Democrat from El Dorado Disposal stated there were only two paper mills in California. (Not the most recent insert, but one before that.) It seems that the paper mills in California are overwhelmed with recycled paper.

“I think it is important that people be correctly informed that recycling in California is experiencing significant problems.”

I looked more closely at the 678 figure and discovered it probably includes a number of companies that may make fancy paper for invitations and other similar operations.

There are, however, five International Paper mills in California, all of which have hiring notices. They are located at Sanger, Exeter, Modesto, Salinas and Visalia.

I appreciate the letter from Phil. He is more than an attorney; he is also well versed in forest practices and the logging business. His grandfather was Swift Berry, who studied engineering at the University of Nebraska and then was among the early students of the Biltmore Forestry School, starting there in 1906.

Swift Berry went on to be an administrator and logging engineer for Regional U.S. Forest Service office in San Francisco. He later became a captain in the Engineer Corps, U.S. Army Forestry Engineers in France during WWI.

In 1929 Swift Berry became an assistant to a VP at Michigan-California Lumber Company, later becoming general manager.

In 1953 he was elected state senator representing El Dorado and Amador counties.

Phil Berry’s father, Bill, was also a forester for Michigan-Cal. When he was 1 month old he was living with his mother and father at logging camp 15, according to Phil’s “Recollections of a Yong Boy Living in Michigan-California Lumber Co. Camp “

Besides milled dimension lumber the Camino mill also had a box factory, Phil wrote. The unassembled boxes were shipped all over the country to be assembled where they were needed. Some folks know about Cable Road. In Phil’s youth there was a narrow-gauge railroad that took dry logs to the box factory. Other boards were used for lumber. All these were transferred to the Camino, Placerville and Lake Tahoe Railroad. The line ended at Camino and carried lumber on to the Southern Pacific tracks, sending lumber and box wood around the country.

From the box factory the narrow gage railroad continued on to a cable where cars from the north side of the canyon were ferried over.

“The cable extended 2,650 feet across the canyon. At this distance there was considerable sag in the actual wire cables. The amazing scale of the cable can be realized when you consider that from the bottom of the sag, the river was 1,200 feet below,” Phil wrote.

Seven miles from the cable on the north side a narrow-gage railroad connected with Michigan-Cal’s Pino Grand sawmill.

“Pino had electricity. I can remember going to the sawmill with my dad. One of the things that particularly impressed me was the large steam operated generator in the basement of the mill. The steam piston drove a large flywheel that was 8 or 10 feet high. The flywheel turned the generator. It consisted of two levers with steel balls on the ends. When they spun around they controlled the amount of steam going to the generator. It was fascinating to watch it spin” Phil wrote.

Where was Camp 15? It was 16 miles east of Pino Grand and was served by the Pino Grand railroad. About 140 people lived at Camp 15. The location is now under Union Valley Reservoir.

The CT&P Railroad also served a lumber mill at Smith Flat. When I first came to the county I interviewed Bob West about his lumber business there. There was a railroad crossing at Highway 50 that stopped traffic while a train went by. The controller boxes are still there. One can see them from the trail near the pedestrian bridge over the highway.

The old locomotive was parked next to what is now the Jack Russel Brewery and restaurant. An old codger talked the city into giving it to the Railroad Museum in exchange for a caboose with no bathroom facilities. The locomotive is at the Railroad Museum workshop with the cover removed and a busted, worthless boiler sitting there in pink oblivion.

 

 

 

Russian disasters and recycling standouts

Feb. 3, 2020

By Michael Raffety

Representative Adam Schiff, in his 2.5-hour impeachment speech before the Senate, brought up Russia again. While the Russians may have revived their military, they still have some major blunders. Recall the Aug. 8, 2019, nuclear explosion in Krasznayarsk, Russia. U.S. intelligence and military experts say the explosion was a failed test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile. Norwegian nuclear experts characterized it as a “nuclear chain reaction,“ and said a nuclear reactor likely exploded. Five Russians died in the explosion.

Speaking of Norwegians, after the new submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea Aug. 12, 2000, it was Norwegian divers who finally opened the hatch and found no one alive among the 118 crew members.

A Dutch team was contracted the next year to lift the submarine. They brought up everything but the bow.

It was later determined that a dummy torpedo had been loaded, when a faulty weld in the torpedo caused leaking of high-test hydrogen peroxide, causing the torpedo to explode, blowing off the inner and outer tubes and igniting a fire. The fire caused the detonation of five or seven torpedo warheads.

A 130-page secret report on the incident was summarized in four pages for publication, which cited “stunning breaches of discipline, shoddy, obsolete and poorly maintained equipment,” and “negligence, incompetence and mismanagement.” It also said the Russian Navy took too long to respond and was unprepared to respond to such a disaster. By the way nine crew members survived six hours before their oxygen ran out.

I’m still taken aback by Russia’s one aircraft carrier and the photo I saw in a newspaper of it going through the English Channel with black smoke coming out of its stack like an early 20^th century steam ship. I spent eight months on the U.S. aircraft carrier Saratoga. It was not nuclear- powered but it did not put out any smoke.

The Russian planes could launch from the aircraft carrier, but they could not land on the carrier. When the carrier got close to Syria it launched its planes, which landed at the airport. I have to assume they dropped the planes on the aircraft carrier with a crane back in Russia. Landing on a carrier at sea requires a highly skilled landing crew and highly trained pilots. It requires constant operations to keep everyone sharp.

On Dec. 12, 2019, that Russian aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, was undergoing major repairs when a fire broke out, injuring nearly a dozen workers. There were 600 workers and an unknown number of officers aboard. The brief report from the Wall Street Journal described it as “a massive fire.” That is their only aircraft carrier.

. . .

On a more prosaic subject, I read an interesting article about recycling. Scott County, Iowa, has a recycling center where recyclables are sorted and organized through machinery and sent to nearby domestic markets that turn them into new products. Of course, there is a nearby papermill in Valparaiso, Ind. There are 678 paper mills in California. I’m not sure what happens to plastic, but there have to be companies that use both plastic, glass bottles and aluminum cans.

I had occasion to use the Deschutes County “dump” near Bend, Ore. It was a very clean building. Instead of backing up and throwing stuff over the wall, at the Deschutes County operation one just drove into a building, followed the cones and a person directing you to a location inside the building where I emptied out the pickup bed and then drove off. Meanwhile other piles were carefully picked up and cleaned off.

I was cleaning up my mom’s house in Sunriver to prepare it for sale. I removed juniper shrubs in front and took them to green recycling the Sunriver Corp maintained. It was free.

 

 

Controlled burning is as old as California’s original inhabitants

10/28/2019

By Michael Raffety

As of Oct. 22, the Caples Fire is 73 percent contained at 3,434 acres. It began as a controlled burn meant to clean out the fuel-loaded understory and slash piles from thinning the forest out. This area hadn’t experienced a fire in 100 years, according to Eldorado Forest Supervisor Laurence Crabtree.

The controlled burn had an auspicious beginning 10 days before the winds kicked up to 25 mph. Snow was on the ground. Volunteers from the Native Plant Society scraped away the pinecones and forest floor duff from around the base of big pine trees. This work left the big trees unscathed by the fire – controlled or otherwise.

The plan was to largely fireproof the forest at the head of the Caples Creek watershed.

When the winds changed it to an uncontrolled burn the Forest Service brought in Cal Fire to help bring it under control.

This is not unique to the Eldorado National Forest. I participated in a field trip organized by the Nevada Irrigation District. It began with one of its major reservoirs where logging had thinned out the area around the lake. It ended with the Sierra National Forest supervisor talking about forest thinning and controlled burning.

Forests in California have been described as a mosaic. Before the coming of the Forest Service different areas of the forest were thinned by lightning, by sheepherders starting a fire as they left for the winter to create more grazing area. The Indians would start fires as they left the mountains for the winter to make it easier to hunt.

California had over 500 separate tribal groups, most of whom hunted and fished — mainly with nets and traps, except for the coastal tribes who could harpoon fish.

“Far from living in a ‘wilderness,’ native Californians continually tended and cultivated the land through controlled burnings, weeding, pruning, tilling, irrigation and selective replanting,” according to “A World Transformed, Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush.”

“’When the Western Mono lit hillsides on fire to encourage the growth of young redbud shoots for basketry, they simulated lightning fires. When the Washoe pruned willow, they mimicked the natural pruning caused by river flooding,’ note anthropologists M. Kat Anderson and co-authors.”

The coming of the Spanish and their missionaries to California wrought some immediate changes to the landscape. Native grasses were replaced by Mediterranean grasses and “hearty weeds.”

These new grasses supported thousands of cattle, horses and mules roaming free. With a shortage of gun powder the Spanish became adept at lassoing a bull whenever they needed meat. By the time of Mexican independence from Spain the rancheros grazed a million head of cattle for the hide and tallow trade with clipper ships from New England.

Measles alone killed one-third of the Bay Area missions’ neophytes between 1806 and 1810.  Before the arrival of the Spanish the Indian population of California is estimated to be 300,000. By 1848 disease had reduced that population to 100,000.

In the San Francisco Bay Area Indians had burned the grasses each year. One visitor traveling down the Peninsula on horseback described a park-like setting as the green grass replaced the burned area each spring. The missionaries stopped the burning and the mission livestock overgrazed the land.

The Spanish did not hunt or fish. They just ate beef and vegetables. The missions grew wine.

Their lack of interest in hunting, especially with limited gunpowder supplies, meant that thousands of elk swam across the Carquinez Strait, deer in abundance roamed freely with little fear. Grizzly bears were found throughout the state and along the coastal mountains.

It was a different state and a different time.

Michael Raffety is retired editor of the Mountain Democrat and a resident of the Placerville area.

Sea otters still recovering from Russian fur trade

11/11/2019

Michael Raffety

While ships of fur traders from England, France and Portugal appeared in the San Francisco Bay or along the California Coast in the 18^th century, it was the advent of the Russians at the turn of the 19^th century that really vacuumed up the furs.

The Russians began collecting otter pelts in Alaska as early as the 1740s and by 1799 a monopoly on the fur trade was granted to the Russian-American Co. The company’s permanent capital was established on Baranof Island in Southeast Alaska. Now called Sitka, in 1799 it was called Novo-Arkangelsk.

According to the book, “World Transformed, Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush,” Russian Governor Aleksandr Baranov and Boston sea captain Joseph O’ Cain struck a deal, whereby the Russians would supply the furs and O’ Cain would sell them to China.

“Local Alaskan Aleut Indians, converted by Russian Orthodox missionaries, used canoes and bone spears to hunt California beavers and otters. Then Yankee ships transported the furs to China. Using the Aleuts and working from a series of bases down the coast, the joint company could send expeditions to systematically slaughter all the animals in a particular region. The first such trip brought Sitka $80,000.”

These New England traders made their way into San Francisco Bay and traded everyday necessities and luxuries with the local Spanish, despite the fact such trade was outlawed by Spain. The benefit was fruits and vegetables for the Russians in Sitka.

From an account of the voyage of a Russian ship stopping with its captain Nikolai Petrovich Rezenov and illustrator and scientist Georg von Langsdorff, comes this account of San Francisco Bay: “There were also seals of various kinds, and preeminent, the precious sea otter, which, almost unheeded, was swimming about the bay in numbers.”

Most of us associate sea lions with San Francisco Bay, where they have taken over a number of docks, while we associate sea otters with Monterey Bay. There may otters in the San Francisco Bay but nothing like the abundance described by Rezanov and Langsdorff.

The Spring 2019 census of the California sea otter conducted from early May to early July along the Central California Coast and in early April at San Nicolas Island in Southern California showed a total of 2,962, a decrease of 166 from 2018. The five-year average showed a growth of 0.12 per year, which the authors called flat.

The survey was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as well as the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The count of the California has been done since 1982 except 2011 when the weather was too bad to make the survey.

The survey covers from Pigeon Point in San Mateo County to Santa Barbara, with a separate count for San Nicholas Island. San Nicolas Island is east of Santa Catalina and north of San Clemente Island. It is in the outer Santa Barbara Passage.

The authors – Briand Hatfield, Julie Yee, Michael Kenner and Joseph Tomoleoni – note that kelp beds protect the sea otters from shark bites, but those with less kelp are more at risk.

“There is no evidence of population growth in the 2019 range-wide five-year trend, nor in many areas north and to the south of the central region. Using the northern range extent calculated in 2018, the five-year trend in sea otter counts was positive in the northern 30 kilometers of the range at 9.4 percent growth per year and negligible in the southern 30 km of the range at 0.55 percent growth per year.”

Until the Russians with their bases in Sitka, Alaska, Ft, Ross and Bodega Bay in California hunted the sea otter to near extinction, the sea otter population before the arrival of the Russians in the 18^th century was estimated to have a population of 150,000-300,000, according to Wikipedia.

The range of the sea otter is from Japan’s Kuril Islands (still held by Russia, heir to the Soviet Union, which has not concluded a WW 11 peace treaty with Japan, to Russia’s Commander Islands. On our side of the Pacific the northern sea otters ranged from the Aleutian Islands to Oregon. The sea otter has no blubber fat, but is kept warm by his thick fur coat with nearly a million hairs be square inch.

The southern sea otter’s range originally extended to Baja California in Mexico.

In Alaska, according to Wikipedia, there were 100,000 sea otters in 1973, but due to a massive decline in the Aleutian population in 2006 the Alaska population was estimated at 73,000. The reason for that decline is not known.

Alaskan sea otters were transplanted to Vancouver Island in British Columbia where they thrived and extended their range across Queen Charlotte Strait to islands north of the strait.

In 1969-70, 59 sea otters were transplanted to the Washington coast and by 2017 were estimated at more than 2,000. In that same time period 95 Alaskan sea otters were transplanted to the Oregon Coast, but that later turned out to be a complete failure.

Sea otters from the Japanese and Russian Islands to Southeast Alaska, British Columbia, Washington State and California from San Mateo to Santa Barbara are still feeling the effects of the Russian exploitation of sea otters in the 18^th and early 19^th century.