Summer and it is all about the water

I guess summer really is here. California finds itself in the third year of drought. We had our first little range fire of about 700 acres near the Ikea distribution facility at the foot of the Grapevine, the streets of Iran are on fire over election fraud and repression from their ruling theocracy, and the powerful California Farm Bureau is waging an all out attack on the Delta Smelt. It brought to mind that old Kingston Trio song, The Merry Minuet, where the song ends with these still pertinent lines "They're rioting in Africa. There's strife in Iran. What nature does not do to us will be done by our fellow man."

With summer here, and thinking about water, I found myself browsing a column the other day describing the little endangered fish, the Delta Smelt, as the ultimate enemy of all life here in California. The opinion piece appeared in The Bakersfield Californian in the Saturday edition.

The views are from one of our local conservative talk-radio personalities (is there any other kind these days?), Inga Barks. Inga, cites a 1993 report presented by a former Kern County Supervisor, which warned 16 years ago of dire consequences for the Central Valley if environmental protection was not balanced with "our very livelihood." She argues "we're on a collision course between fish and mankind -- and mankind is losing." She goes on with even greater intensity, "Read this part aloud: Farms are dying, our economy is failing and jobs are disappearing -- all because someone thinks it makes sense to put the needs of a fish too dumb to stay alive above the needs and jobs of humans."

I don't think smelt can be blamed for all those no-money-down adjustable-rate-mortgages and the quick-sell games AIG, Countrywide, Ameriquest, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and so many others played in bringing the economy to the porcelain bowl on wobbly and bent knees. The little finger length fish had no part in that Wall Street party and hangover. I doubt Mr. and Mrs. Smelt have anything to do with our Middle East war policy, or California's failed state budget.

But, farming interests really do hate the Delta Smelt during dry years (and there are always plenty of dry years in California) for curtailing contracted water shipments under the Central Valley Project. This project came into law during the last Great Depression and saw its most significant update in 1992. In an act of supreme irony a Republican President, George H. W. Bush ushered in with his signature the Reclamation Projects Authorization and Adjustment Act of 1992 (Public Law 102-575) that included Title XXIV, the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA).

CVPIA´s general purposes are to:

1. Protect, restore, and enhance fish, wildlife, and associated habitats in California´s Central Valley and Trinity river basins
2. Address the Central Valley Project´s impacts on fish, wildlife, and associated habitat
3. Improve the Central Valley Project´s operational flexibility
4. Increase water-related benefits provided through expanded use of voluntary water transfers and improved water conservation
5. Contribute to the State of California´s interim and long-term efforts to protect the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary
6. Achieve a reasonable balance among competing demands for project water, including requirements for fish and wildlife, agriculture, municipal and industrial and power contractors.

These purposes respond to a need to modify the project´s existing water operations and physical facilities.

With all that environmental protection language in the law you can only imagine how angry big California industrial and agribusiness interests were with George H. W. Bush. They certainly did not help his re-election efforts against W. J. Clinton.

When the original Central Valley Project was enacted in the 1930s there was a 160 acre feet limit on the amount of water any farm concern could use. By the early 1980s 80% of all the farmland being used in California was on farms of 1,000 acres or larger. 75% of all agricultural output came from only 10% of the farms.(source CVP link). The current limit of 960 acre feet of project water came with the Reclamation and Reform Act of 1982, which also ended the residency requirement in the original law on the farms receiving the Central Valley Project water. This why so many LLCs and corporations in Nevada and Delaware now own most of California's farmland. And people wonder why California is so far in debt.

California is a peculiar place when it comes to how water rights work. There are two watersheds in California's Central Valley Basin: the Sacramento River and its tributaries, and the San Joaquin River and its tributaries. Reasonable use, public benefit and he who got there first gets first claim to the water are the general rules of water in the state. The really big farms are covered, because most of them are senior water rights holders. The northern part of the state is covered because of key protections built into the Project law over the years.

These key protections have been built over a long period of time to govern and persuade people using water in California. The County of Origin Law is one of those legislative protections. The Watershed of Origin Protection Act is another. These both came into law during the 1930s, and both protect the areas and counties where the water originates. These counties and areas have first claims to the water, which supersedes what the state or federal government can do with these watersheds. This is why NorCal gets water and SoCal gets water, but most of small to mid size agricultural concerns in Central Cal get squat. Seniority and home field advantage always trumps hopes and dreams of small outfits.

Most of California agriculture could, and should, do a lot more for water conservation. The Pacific Institute put out a blistering report on current water practices by the California agriculture industry. They argue with technology and science applied to farms total usage could be cut by 20% within twenty years time. Dry years would not be an impediment and our economy would not be damaged. This could hold down some major costs on infrastructure projects, like a new peripheral canal.

I am surprised how little energy statewide there is for a new peripheral canal, which really is something all Californians should bite the bullet on. The Delta is at the stage where it is unsustainable. Our levees and entire water supply are one major earthquake away from catastrophe, with the distinct prospect of no water for more than twenty million people in the state who rely on the old Central Valley Project if a big one should occur.

The Delta Smelt is one of the very few species able to navigate between fresh water and salt water in one of those precious and little understood filtration systems, which millions of years of evolution perfected to keep nature healthy. The Los Angeles Times ran a story a couple of years back, during the beginning of our current drought explaining why the Delta Smelt is so important. In thirty years time this little fish is one of the seventeen remaining fish species from a population of 29 fish species that called the Delta home in the 1970s.

Frontline recently did a great show examining how our urban and suburban industrial development has undone much of our environment. Poisoned Waters, explores our very endangered waterways with the focus on the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound. The best thing about Frontline documentaries is that they are balanced. There are possible solutions in the offing from stakeholders on both sides of the issue. The growing dead hole in the Chesapeake Bay and rising pollution of Puget Sound should be huge alarm bells going off around the nation, but it is still all quiet on the American western front when it comes to protecting our increasingly fragile ecosystem, particularly the western front in California.

Cool, clear, water. The drought is real, and so is this problem. Blaming the Delta Smelt and the other important species of our largest estuary serves no one, even those who rail against the little fish. Small things matter. Use a car wash that recycles water, instead of hosing your car at home. Water your lawn less this year, and think about replacing grass with plants that use little water. Buy low flow toilets with high action air pumps to save water and remove waste efficiently. Call your dorky legislator to move the canal process along and understand that a small charge on all of us can make big things that are necessary happen. You get the picture. We live in a starfish world where small things can make big improvements.

No rationing at the end, but then it's Medicare

I'm glad this week is nearly done. We squared away the hospice situation for my father, which I thought might help his frame of mind, but it became just another turn on the dimmer switch darkening an already heavy shadowed mood. Nothing ever seems to be good enough. It is always too many on hand or not enough. Porridge too hot, porridge too cold. But, nearing the end of days what does anyone expect?

My dad has an adage regarding his late stage in life, "These are not the golden years, these are the rust years." I know my dad could not name one Neil Young song, but he certainly summed one up brilliantly. Now it becomes a finite waiting game. I will say his current care is probably the best he has experienced in a long, long while. Lots of attention with a variety of people to interact with from Chaplains to nurses to social workers to doctors, all very pleasant and understanding. If only the health care situation for those who don't have a set end-date were so thoughtfully constructed.

My dad's health care in the past has been like many in this country. A problem that made a journey to the doctor necessary, which was met with a brief visit and exam with the ubiquitous prescription to mask the pain or control a problem which would remain. For most of my dad's ailments, whether it was the irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia), or the limited blood flow and oxygen intake (Chronic Obstruction Pulmonary Disease and Cardiovascular Disease). The short and sweet version is defined as getting up in years with too much smoke on the lungs, which hurts the heart. Take some more drugs, which slow you to a crawl, and when you cannot crawl any longer meet your new attendants.

All hospices accept Medicare that I checked out. I'm not sure what the future of hospice will be for all those who didn't put away the million dollar retirement package. Given our current battle to provide universal health care coverage, and the blow-back from the entrenched conglomerate interests who not only control the insured in this country but the government as well, I am becoming more and more resigned that not much change will happen for health care in these United Stupids of America.

There is news out this week that there will be no votes from Republicans to put a government single-payer option program into play as part of health care reform. There are Democrats who do not want this option????? A health care plan gets unveiled soon, but the whole process may be in jeopardy due to our failed economy, and the onslaught of conservative pundit rhetoric that the sky is filled with socialists and they are all falling on you with plans to ration your health care.

I don't know about you, but rationing by rescission, by ever increasing premiums with higher out of pocket expenditures and having insurance bureaucrats dictate what treatments you should receive, and when, seems to be the norm in this country already.

But rest assured for those nearing the end of the trail, hospice is still there. Given the head splitting loud anti-tax drum it probably will not be a social service provided through a government program in the not too distant future. You will be looking ahead to real premiums from real insurers to cover your real end of days, which will leave you and yours with what you came into the world with.

A Conversation on Values

I found myself listening in on a conversation a table away from me and my dining companion at one of the local coffee shops the other day. I had an ear open because the both of us at our table didn't have a lot of new things to say to one another, and we were each busy working over our respective egg choices.

The conversation between the two sixty-something guys seated at the other table involved a class on values and the responses it elicited. I only heard bits and pieces of the dialog. There was an interesting observation as to how deeply held values when challenged could create physical symptoms of illness or distress. There was also a statement from the white bearded philosopher who did most of the talking, that people holding extreme personal or cultural values from both sides of the sociological and political spectrum invariably left the class before completion. I guessed that resolution or compromise was not part of the extremist academic agenda. If the speaker offered his interpretation, I missed it.

Values are serious business for people. This week some ancient guy named James W. von Brunn shot and killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. His personal values of white supremacy were being threatened, and he decided the time was right for a violent confrontation at a place that represented people and values who most threatened his. We saw this played out just two weeks ago when another values driven man, whose pro-life values were threatened, killed Dr. George Tiller, who was one of the very few doctors in this country performing the still legal late term medical procedure for women who believed abortion was their only option.

You hear a lot of comments and questions in the waking day regarding values. As a nation of people, what do we truly value in this country? Do we value military might above all else? If not, why do we spend more than half a trillion dollars every year on the military industrial complex? You hear plenty about the value of life from nearly every quarter, and yet we have millions of kids going hungry while living in poverty, incarcerate more people than any other nation and won't cover nearly 50 million Americans who live without health care. So maybe the value of life in this land has more to do with being not dead than it has to do with the quality of life provided for its citizens.

Values of a nation are tough to pin down, because a country's values are really just a collection of individual values. However, values are not permanent. Values shift. What many Americans valued fifty years ago might not hold any value today. Smoking was deemed socially cool in the 1950s, with cigarettes and their accessories holding a high cultural value. Today cigarettes and smokers are held in contempt, social outcasts.

As individuals, our values seem in perpetual conflict. We have more pet dogs (74 million) and cats (88 million) in America than any other nation by far. The numbers are from American Pet Products Manufacturers Association (APPMA). We obviously value pet companionship. However, American Humane estimates that approximately 9.6 million pets are euthanized each year. Yes we love pets, but we kill so many healthy and neglected ones every year.

I thought about a few of the values I have held over the years. I collected music, film, books, art and ball cards for years. I put a high value on my personal collection. But values can change over time, and my attachment to my personal collection of these popular culture fixtures is not as strong today as it was five years ago. My values on this formerly big part of my life have shifted.

There are stories all over America this week, as a result of the two examples of violence I mentioned earlier, that extremism is wrecking havoc throughout the nation. The clash of values on how we live takes place everyday all over the country from barbershops to blogs to living rooms to barrooms. One hundred and forty-four years after the Civil War we appear more divided than ever before, and face the real possibility of another very uncivil war amongst ourselves if we do not find a way to respect differing values.

We need a values check. We need to take a serious look inside each of us and determine what is most important to our individual selves. I believe we need to acknowledge people live in communities where space, time and resources are shared with very divergent people who have their own values, which might be very different from values you or I hold.

I always try to remember that values are not axioms, or self evident truths. Values are constructs of the brain which get applied to people and things we come into contact with. People change, and so do values. You cannot assume your values hold any sway over anyone but yourself. No sense in going nuclear over value differences, or allowing a few very loud shouters to make you defensive. You earned your values the old fashioned way, you made them up as you went along the path you chose.

The Hook Up

NPR ran a story very recently on today's variation of the mating game. It's called a Hookup these days. My idea of a hookup today is getting speared by my cat. Accidentally, of course. (Really, I believe that!) The headline for the piece boldly pronounces: Sex Without Intimacy: No Dating, No Relationships. A lot of people in my Facebook world made comments that this article was not news. I think it is, and I think the dynamic between men and women continues to shift in amazing ways.

More and more people don't date, they hookup. Hookup is not a new term, and the acts of casual encounters are not new. With the 40th anniversary of Woodstock coming this August, and being a veteran of those fuzzy and furry moments of the 1960s and 1970s sexual revolutionary times, I can verify hookup is not new. What appears new is the growing detachment found now between men and women in social settings.

On an intuitive level this seems a natural progression of more women in the workplace, women outnumbering men in colleges, the growing numbers of the single parent and the decline of organized religion in our society. Given those social drivers and trends, women today can experiment with relationships on a level historically only reserved for men. Women can do so without the baggage of harassment that has typically come from the dual moralistic standards applied antagonistically by institutions aiming at keeping a rigid male dominated status quo.

This new hookup of casual encounters of the libido-driven-kind signals new social relationship patterns in a highly competitive world of commerce. Many post Woodstock single men and women looked to each other as potential economic partners fighting to gain a foothold in the business jungle of American life. Two incomes were needed to survive in increasingly expensive cities where jobs were located. As incomes increased for couples from the 1980s until 2000 these work-family couples were able to meet inflation demands of rising costs for goods and services and maintain a lifestyle of physical comfort.

This decade has undone financially much of what many of those post-Woodstock couples achieved. Wages have stagnated. Benefits have been lost, or have become too expensive to maintain at former accepted levels. Personal and real property values have fallen so low they have left many couples upside down and near total bankruptcy.

All this might be making an impression on young people today. You can catch a National Center for Health Statistics snapshot of the marriage and corresponding divorce rates for America at the provided link (NCHS). Fewer people are getting married these days. The graph in the cited NPR feature at the top of this blog shows that those who do get hitched are waiting a lot longer to do the deed.

Maybe another major factor in this new more casual hookup model of today, which bypasses many of the old dating rules, is that there are so many more kids who never left, or returned after a brief stay away from the nest. Could be the Peter Pan Effect, where kids never want to grow up and assume the responsibilities of being adults. In America there has not been a whole lot of specific data on boomerang kids, or never-left-the-nest kids, but the Baltimore Sun reported that multigenerational families in the US has grown 60% since 1990. There are numbers in Canada and Australia that indicate this is not just a US phenomena.

Economics also plays a big part in this return to the early 20th Century living realities where kids never leave, and three or four generations all reside in the same home. Money probably plays a huge part, as well, in the hookup. Who can afford numbers of dates that ultimately get nowhere? Being in a crowded nest might make also make getting too close too real for a lot of young people. Singles are much more likely to return to the nest over married couples, but even married couples in times like these have come back home to mommy and daddy.

When I was young the thought never crossed my mind to live as an adult with my parents. Horizontal boppin' is an amazingly difficult option with the parent(s) in the next bedroom. Who needs that? I also hated the hit and miss of going weeks without, after spending too many all-nighters in pursuit of getting into the Fruit-of-the-Looms. Ever had the flashlightus-interuptus in a rocking vehicle? Talk about deflation!

Of course, if video gamer action is what really turns a person on, then who knows how long this new hookup culture in a four generation house may last. Hookup might signal really big families of singles for this Boomer meets Gen-X and Gen-Y world.

Interesting possibilities. I guess we'll see how all this plays out. It really is what makes life interesting. You never know how things like this will turn out, much like a date.

The Future Is a Millisecond Away: Ask Lou

Consumer confidence seems on the rise. Foreclosures hit an all time high this month. The US government now owns 60% of General Motors. My neighbor, Dustin, now calls the company Government Motors, and not in a nice way. What to make of it all?

No one knows what lies ahead. I now realize health is the most important part of every day. When you do not have it, life becomes a walk through mounds of fire ants. Being without health insurance could change that walk into a crawl through those same carnivores. Living here in the reddest California county I see the vast majority of people oppose a universal single-payer system. A lot of people here, although not big on Darwin's theory of evolution, ironically subscribe to the survival of the fittest thinking, which means the fittest (those with the most means) get cool benefits, and those not quite fit enough (fill in your own means quotient) get squat.

Arguments, which show our current health care market forces those with the means to pay substantially more in premiums to cover those who have no coverage, have no sway on the rugged individualist when they are immersed in a discussion on why universal coverage would be a societal and economic tonic. Forget bringing up GDP numbers that show us idiots here in the states paying almost twice the price for less results than every other advanced industrial nation. Here in Bakersfield those types of facts are met with, "Boring!" some of the time. Or, "Socialism is evil!" some other amount of time. There are many who believe every ill visited on the US is due to illegal immigration. Schools, health care, jobs, roads, food and sex all would be perfect in that Prairie Home Companion/Lake Woebegone way if only all those illegals were washed away from our shores.

The only thing that might convince a few of these people is if they, or a significant member of their immediate families, suffer a big enough health crisis and go broke. Maybe the 30% out of pocket expense, as part of the affordable coverage, really hurts the pocketbook. Maybe this expense occurs as the result of a major hernia, which happened from the lap dance administered when the wife was out of town at the local relaxation lounge that cannot be explained. This expense causes some critical thinking to take place that the insurance you do have currently is really bogus right now when I need it most.

When I hear the conservatives rail at socialized medicine, and that medical choices will be determined by a government bureaucrat I always ask what difference does that make to anyone on a typical HMO or PPO plan today. The fact is a bureaucrat working for an insurance company makes the call on what treatment you get and what medicines you can take, or at least what the insurance company will pay a portion of as part of your coverage. And if you have too many, or too expensive, claims from an insurance company they simply cut you loose.

As the bigger companies continue to ship jobs and work to the least expensive nations of the world, and more small business start ups spring onto the US economic Monopoly board by displaced former employees of big companies, the cost these new small businesses can bear are not that much if they have any hope for survival. This simply means businesses can no longer be the place that subsidizes health care costs.

A quote from an MSNBC article "If we don't get it done this year, we're not going to get it done," Obama told supporters by phone as he flew home on Air Force One from a West Coast fundraising trip. -

This above quote is motivation for me. I hope it is motivation for you. No advanced nation on the planet allows an accident or illness to financially ruin a family. This can only happen in the USA.

On this date, June 2, 1941, Lou Gehrig " the luckiest man on the face of the earth" succumbed to
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), now called Lou Gehrig's Disease. A few short years before he was the Iron Horse who never missed a game as a perennial all-star.

Your future is a millisecond away. Can you cover the small change a significant medical problem might require?

400 Years of the Telescope, finally

June 1, 2009 finds cause for celebration. I just received a special DVD from PBS this past week. I could not put the program on because of a mind boggling busy schedule I got myself into the last ten days. 400 Years of the Telescope had to wait.

I already described my trip to Northern California on my last post. When I left for my first trip out of town in two years, I did not anticipate such a tremendous amount of drama from my father over the few days I was out of town. I won't bore you with the details, but he and my wife had several conversations over the weekend of my absence. I am not sure when, exactly, older people suddenly find their mind set to be very much the same as young children, but the change is not all that pleasant. Old people do not look like young kids.

The wait for the adult to come into the body of your aged parent reminds me of Godot. While I wait for the adult, I take the child to the ER over a small bout of gastritis. Death surely sits on the doorstep this time. A battery of tests and blood panels reveal the patient will live. This marks the third ER experience over a very minor bodily inconvenience in the last couple of years. It took me awhile to get over the all night stay at the emergency room for the small bloody nose, which culminated in an MRI for the afflicted parent. Tests negative, of course. And so it goes.

I probably could have watched the DVD, if Pops was the only thing making up my week, but on a journey out to water my starving summer lawn I happened to notice a blister in the paint on the porch support beam. Using my trusty pistol popping index finger to explore the bubble on the beam I discovered the wood was shot full of termite tunnels and subterranean dirt residue. Well, that will cost some money and suck up some more good thoughts on the state of my economy. It did, but the peace of mind knowing the ultimate chew-masters of civilization would be eradicated for a decent amount of time put me in a tolerable space. Also, my cross-country truck-driving sis would be in town on the days the work would be done.

Today I've checked out this wonderful PBS documentary fully, and can truthfully say the opening two-minute sequence my youngest son, Winston, put together with his team of student artists is really quality stuff. At the end of the program he has a credit line all to himself, in bold type. Oh sure, the astrophysicists, astronomers and the cinematography are all excellent, but wow! that opening sequence.