Hello from the land of Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream. I finally cracked and decided $5.99 for a giant container of lovely smelling cracked-cuticles preventative. We're talking years of ghastly nail care here. I don't require bright, shining, enviable nails, but merely an un-ravaged set. Clean, neat and healthy, or as much as they can be taking into account my daily channeling of anxiety into "evening" them all out. With my teeth.
I'm in Book Purgatory once again and it's a terrible, terrible place to be. M. Rescue me. Somebody! The terrible thought entered my brain the other day that I no longer even like books, that they all suck, a waste of time. I cannot even believe the neurons and synapses conjured that assessment, however brief. But nothing is holding me. For months now, I haven't finished one single thing. The next book club selection, which happens to have a fabulous cover of a women flashing a field of cows - midwestern breast cancer story - turned out to be a self-published abomination wherein the "author" copy/pasted her CaringBridge journal into a single document and called it a book. Reader comments and all. Bah. Everything else, meaning the real books I've checked out from the library to try, have failed to hold me. Too dark, too fluffy, too predictable, too copying of the latest popular thing.
Getmeoutofhere.
And I get that death is a part of life, but lately there seems to be a surrounding wave. Excessive hearse sightings. News of passings-on that have been both expected and not. Two and three degrees away, rather than the usual five or six. I don't know what to make of it all except to take in the beauty of remembrances, grieve with the most closely affected, ponder the great beyond...
***
Okay it's days later and that clearly was the middle of a thought or even a sentence.
I did find a book! That so far I like, maybe 35 or so pages in with no ship-jumping thoughts or anything. Thanks, RHE, for being that engaging of a writer. Your thoughts on Martha Stewart's Housekeeping Handbook alone earn a gold star. I'm on exactly the same page with those daily, weekly, monthly and yearly checklists and am totally living in squalor, too.
I've had "Happy Blog-iversary" in my head since Friday at least. Haaaaaaaaaaaaappy Blog-iversary. Woo! Nine years seems both impossible and completely accurate. I do miss the pre-FB, pre-Pinterest, pre-Tumblr days of blogging, when the writing/content took center stage. Now it's all popping in occasionally whenever we can spare a moment away from the mini-micro blogs that are tweets and FB posts. Onward, as ever, but I'm always given pause by the question of, what did we lose?
Also, if I were to create a pie graph of personal energy spent each day - well maybe I should do that. Graph it. Because maybe I'm not really aware of where it's all going. I suspect stressing over failed expectations? Like I'm not doing enough, ever, or whatever I do accomplish somehow lacks. Which is frustrating because I'm doing the best that I can? And it's not only my voice that I hear putting forth this assessment. And some distant part of me is also aware that were those voices to be silenced, I'd probably a whole lot more energy, even creative energy, to expend.
Moving on from that entirely subjective thought strand, let's wish one fourth of our readership a happy birthday! Yay, AA!
The weather-cooling brought on by the formidable Karen-storm occurred behind schedule but is here at last. Windows are thrown open.
A field trip to the farm tomorrow with a group of tiny people is on tap. (Their parents will all be present, too.)
Yesterday I did a 1-mile walk in the sun to help stop hunger - a much different experience than last year's chilly gray 5K walk. I brought a puppy and a 5-year-old with me, so a mile seemed wise.
Today I folded laundry and made ribbon dancers for my preschoolers while watching ProRun. Queue the Helen Meltdown in 5-4-3... I'm so glad TimGunn told her to suck it up in his TimGunn way. And I love Heidi's charming attempts at Americanisms, like "the dangling sausage," and "hitting it on the nail." Also, some surprisingly kickass looks? I'm a little bored of the whole inevitable duking it out among the lower-ranked, but whatever. Still do NOT agree with the Kate oust... rooting for Dom maybe, ultimately? We'll see.
Ah, behold our blog-look. Behold us! I await the questions from another quarter of our readership. I will make it a point to blog just about BUGS next post.
For now - sleep.
xoxoxo to you,
pen
Showing posts with label fall weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall weather. Show all posts
Monday, October 7, 2013
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Mis-Information: LA = Desert
WE ARE NOT IN A DESERT. We do not, nor have we ever lived in a desert. There are deserts near us, bordering parts of us but---
The los angeles basin is a sub-tropical Mediterranean climate. Shared with, as the fancy map indicates very few places in the world. Which makes us obviously awesome, and i understand, sometimes short on water and yes can be totally blazing and YET... no, not a desert. Stop calling it that. Spread the word.
from wiki:
Los Angeles has a Subtropical-Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification Csb on the coast, Csa inland), and receives just enough annual precipitation to avoid Köppen's BSh (semi-arid climate) classification. Los Angeles enjoys plenty of sunshine throughout the year, with an average of only 35 days with measurable precipitation annually.[18]
we are almost this:
A semi-arid climate or steppe climate describes climatic regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not extremely so. A more precise definition is given by the Köppen climate classification that treats steppe climates (BSk and BSh) as intermediates between desert climates (BW) and humid climates in ecological characteristics and agricultural potential. Semi-arid climates tend to support short or scrubby vegetation, with semi-arid areas usually being dominated by either grasses or shrubs.
for further reading:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7v.html
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2003/11/la_is_not_a_des.php
(good article on the hows and why the myth started...
The los angeles basin is a sub-tropical Mediterranean climate. Shared with, as the fancy map indicates very few places in the world. Which makes us obviously awesome, and i understand, sometimes short on water and yes can be totally blazing and YET... no, not a desert. Stop calling it that. Spread the word.
Areas with Mediterranean climate
from wiki:
Los Angeles has a Subtropical-Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification Csb on the coast, Csa inland), and receives just enough annual precipitation to avoid Köppen's BSh (semi-arid climate) classification. Los Angeles enjoys plenty of sunshine throughout the year, with an average of only 35 days with measurable precipitation annually.[18]
we are almost this:
A semi-arid climate or steppe climate describes climatic regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not extremely so. A more precise definition is given by the Köppen climate classification that treats steppe climates (BSk and BSh) as intermediates between desert climates (BW) and humid climates in ecological characteristics and agricultural potential. Semi-arid climates tend to support short or scrubby vegetation, with semi-arid areas usually being dominated by either grasses or shrubs.
for further reading:
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7v.html
http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2003/11/la_is_not_a_des.php
(good article on the hows and why the myth started...
Ralph Shaffer is professor emeritus of history at Cal Poly Pomona and the historian who put together the website (and book) compiling letters published in the L.A. Times in the 1880s. In recent years, he has been trying without success to get Times writers to stop referring to Los Angeles as a desert, climate-wise. Simply put, he says it rains too much for the coastal plain to qualify as a desert.
After LAT style czar Melissa McCoy last week banned the term "resistance fighters" to describe the Iraqi bombers, Professor Shaffer directed his campaign her way -- churlishly borrowing the syntax of her memo that was disclosed here.
Professor Shaffer's submitted (and apparently rejected) op-ed piece follows.
THAT DESERT MYTH: WILL IT EVER DRY UP?
Harrison Gray Otis has been dead for nearly a century and the Chandlers no longer run The Times, but the myth they created - that Los Angeles would be a vast desert wasteland without importing water from distant sources - remains firmly embedded among members of the paper's staff. A recent lead editorial, "It's Still a Desert," shows a continuing disregard for the reality of the city's climate.
Briefly, early in the paper's history, Otis actually pushed the idea that Southern California was water rich. In an 1888 article the opening paragraph noted that "Developments throughout Southern California show beyond doubt that there is a plentiful supply of water in our mountains and valleys to irrigate every acre of land that needs irrigation, and for every other purpose to sustain many millions of people. Every day the supply is increased...."
That view didn't last long. In support of legislation in the 1880s to divert river water for the purpose of irrigation, Otis reprinted an article from San Francisco's Alta California that characterized opponents as "in favor of restoring Southern California to its primeval condition of wilderness and desert," abandoning it to "the lizard, horned toad and burning sun." No doubt a bit of Bay Area snobbery was involved in the Alta's description, but Otis knew a winning argument when he read one. He resurrected it two decades later to coax voters into supporting the Owens Valley aqueduct bonds.
Over the years the "Los Angeles is a desert" theme has appeared regularly in The Times. Columnists, reporters, editors, politicians and op-ed writers all pushed the idea. A quarter century ago Remi Nadeau, quoted in the recent editorial, wrote in an op-ed piece that "Los Angeles is by far the largest city ever built in a desert."
Wrong on two counts. According to the widely used Koppen classification, Los Angeles and its coastal basin are humid, with a Mediterranean climate of winter rains and warm summers similar to its European namesake. In fact, migrants from the eastern states, arriving in the early nineteenth century, described a Los Angeles plain filled with ponds, forested, and anything but a desert. The ponds dried up and the forests disappeared, not because the climate changed but because resources were simply overused.
But even if Los Angeles were in a desert, Nadeau's statement surely was news to Cairo's residents, who thought they lived in the world's most populous desert city.
Given the city's mean annual temperature of 65 degrees, to qualify as a desert under the Koppen system Los Angeles' yearly rainfall would have to average less than 7.22 inches. That has occurred less than ten times in the past 125 years. To put it another way, with its nearly 15 inches of rain each year the city would have to have a mean annual temperature of 100 degrees to be a desert. With a temperature like that the basin's overpopulation problem would quickly disappear.
Just because Los Angeles brings in water from hundreds of miles away does not make it a desert. Nearly all of the world's largest cities, located in humid areas, have to import water from great distances to supply their needs. And no one seriously refers to New York or San Francisco as deserts.
Nor is it necessary to distort the climatic record to make the point that Southern California has too many people and too much industry for the water supply that is naturally available here. Lawns, azaleas and non-native plants can be supported by Southern California's local water supply. It's the region's unbridled growth that The Times should be attacking.
[Ralph E. Shaffer, professor emeritus in history at Cal Poly Pomona and
editor of "Letters From the People," an on-line anthology of letters to The
Times in the 1880s, can be reached at reshaffer@csupomona.edu]
After LAT style czar Melissa McCoy last week banned the term "resistance fighters" to describe the Iraqi bombers, Professor Shaffer directed his campaign her way -- churlishly borrowing the syntax of her memo that was disclosed here.
While "desert" is not an inaccurate term on its face when applied to some, but not all, portions of the county north of the San Gabriel Mountains, it conveys an incorrect although intended meaning when referring to the heavily populated basin. A more accurate descriptor, preferred by anyone who has had a course in elementary geography or climatology, would be "humid," which is the designation applied to the city of Los Angeles by Vladimir Koppen nearly a century ago in what was, and probably still is, the most widely used climatic classification system in the world. How the Times came to be the promoter of the desert myth is described in the op-ed piece below...Now I should confess I've been guilty of using the desert canard, but after reading his case below I won't anymore. (I wouldn't have anyway after researching Wilshire Boulevard. I learned about the marshes that lay south of the road -- and about all the streams from the Hollywood Hills that fed them. One still flows across the Wilshire Country Club and through Hancock Park. There's a reason the rancho that covered the land where Beverly Hills sits was called Rodeo de las Aguas -- "gathering of the waters.")
Professor Shaffer's submitted (and apparently rejected) op-ed piece follows.
THAT DESERT MYTH: WILL IT EVER DRY UP?
Harrison Gray Otis has been dead for nearly a century and the Chandlers no longer run The Times, but the myth they created - that Los Angeles would be a vast desert wasteland without importing water from distant sources - remains firmly embedded among members of the paper's staff. A recent lead editorial, "It's Still a Desert," shows a continuing disregard for the reality of the city's climate.
Briefly, early in the paper's history, Otis actually pushed the idea that Southern California was water rich. In an 1888 article the opening paragraph noted that "Developments throughout Southern California show beyond doubt that there is a plentiful supply of water in our mountains and valleys to irrigate every acre of land that needs irrigation, and for every other purpose to sustain many millions of people. Every day the supply is increased...."
That view didn't last long. In support of legislation in the 1880s to divert river water for the purpose of irrigation, Otis reprinted an article from San Francisco's Alta California that characterized opponents as "in favor of restoring Southern California to its primeval condition of wilderness and desert," abandoning it to "the lizard, horned toad and burning sun." No doubt a bit of Bay Area snobbery was involved in the Alta's description, but Otis knew a winning argument when he read one. He resurrected it two decades later to coax voters into supporting the Owens Valley aqueduct bonds.
Over the years the "Los Angeles is a desert" theme has appeared regularly in The Times. Columnists, reporters, editors, politicians and op-ed writers all pushed the idea. A quarter century ago Remi Nadeau, quoted in the recent editorial, wrote in an op-ed piece that "Los Angeles is by far the largest city ever built in a desert."
Wrong on two counts. According to the widely used Koppen classification, Los Angeles and its coastal basin are humid, with a Mediterranean climate of winter rains and warm summers similar to its European namesake. In fact, migrants from the eastern states, arriving in the early nineteenth century, described a Los Angeles plain filled with ponds, forested, and anything but a desert. The ponds dried up and the forests disappeared, not because the climate changed but because resources were simply overused.
But even if Los Angeles were in a desert, Nadeau's statement surely was news to Cairo's residents, who thought they lived in the world's most populous desert city.
Given the city's mean annual temperature of 65 degrees, to qualify as a desert under the Koppen system Los Angeles' yearly rainfall would have to average less than 7.22 inches. That has occurred less than ten times in the past 125 years. To put it another way, with its nearly 15 inches of rain each year the city would have to have a mean annual temperature of 100 degrees to be a desert. With a temperature like that the basin's overpopulation problem would quickly disappear.
Just because Los Angeles brings in water from hundreds of miles away does not make it a desert. Nearly all of the world's largest cities, located in humid areas, have to import water from great distances to supply their needs. And no one seriously refers to New York or San Francisco as deserts.
Nor is it necessary to distort the climatic record to make the point that Southern California has too many people and too much industry for the water supply that is naturally available here. Lawns, azaleas and non-native plants can be supported by Southern California's local water supply. It's the region's unbridled growth that The Times should be attacking.
[Ralph E. Shaffer, professor emeritus in history at Cal Poly Pomona and
editor of "Letters From the People," an on-line anthology of letters to The
Times in the 1880s, can be reached at reshaffer@csupomona.edu]
Thursday, September 25, 2008
um, by pen
It’s currently raining out there WAY more than that alleged hurricane a few weeks ago. Which is fine, really. I like rain. I like chillier temps. Except, IF THE POWER GOES OUT TONIGHT,
I WILL NOT BE HAPPY.
It IS only the biggest night in television.
Something to keep in mind, Universe.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
final answers
on TVkeeping, love: Aliens in America, Reaper, Pushing Daisies, Life
precarious: Private Practice, Kid Nation
NO: Bionic Woman, Big Bang Theory
on ANTM
still my favorite: Heather!!!
make-over "do": bald, and somehow less obnoxious now Bianca
make-over "don't": long-haired, platinum blond Jenah, who now looks like the toothy, "non-edgy" love child of Melrose and Caridee
although: Jenah's picture still kicked ass.
taken down a few much-needed notches: Victoria! what was her verbal vendetta against Twiggy all about?
omg, horrible: Saleisha's Beatle hair
Nigel: increasingly hot.
Baby N.Lo
two weeks from due date
zero station
contractions: all the freaking time
no more progress expected till true, REAL labor
BUT, deadline: no more than 2 weeks past due date
so: within a month
K.Lo
mood: erratic
lip: fat, from tripping the other day and biting her lip
nose: scuffed all over after tragic fall this morning down 2 concrete stairs
mommy: BAD.
weather
cooler!
untimely heat wave: over!
windows: open!!!
me
a tiny bit more sane.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
here and there
The little things: you can change your colors now on Yahoo! beta mail! Up next: will you show my avatar?
New vocab for Bug: "sucker." As in, "Your mommy is a sucker for giving you yet another popsicle this afternoon."
Love just for the title, but on the content, can't decide: "America's Most Smartest Model."
Although I did enjoy: that they right away kicked off "Kept Man's" Slavko and also that girl who everyone said was orange.
And: I love Ben Stein.
Snob: I won't read this stupid book I bought at Spring's Library Book Sale because I'm afraid it will taint my writing. If I keep writing. If I can stop being distracted by contractions and keep writing.
Anyway, the book: It's called Blessed are the Cheesemakers, and no offense Sarah-Kate Lynch, but that's a stupid title. I should have known better. Vapidly enjoyable chick-lit is one thing, but after 10 pages, I'm out. I hate some of the characters already and I think you're being too coy, stylistically. It's to the garage sale pile with you.
Weather: too effing hot for October.
Seriously?: I cannot get comfortable. Not for sleeping, not for just sitting around on the couch. Certainly not for walking or standing. I don't want to share anymore, it (the body) is mine.
New vocab for Bug: "sucker." As in, "Your mommy is a sucker for giving you yet another popsicle this afternoon."
Love just for the title, but on the content, can't decide: "America's Most Smartest Model."
Although I did enjoy: that they right away kicked off "Kept Man's" Slavko and also that girl who everyone said was orange.
And: I love Ben Stein.
Snob: I won't read this stupid book I bought at Spring's Library Book Sale because I'm afraid it will taint my writing. If I keep writing. If I can stop being distracted by contractions and keep writing.
Anyway, the book: It's called Blessed are the Cheesemakers, and no offense Sarah-Kate Lynch, but that's a stupid title. I should have known better. Vapidly enjoyable chick-lit is one thing, but after 10 pages, I'm out. I hate some of the characters already and I think you're being too coy, stylistically. It's to the garage sale pile with you.
Weather: too effing hot for October.
Seriously?: I cannot get comfortable. Not for sleeping, not for just sitting around on the couch. Certainly not for walking or standing. I don't want to share anymore, it (the body) is mine.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
affirmative
in my hand
holds a pen
in my outsides
it is rain
sparkling fits
of a grey sky
we prayed (like)
old israelites
uplifted you and i
and it poured down
an arch of passion
upon parched land
we
praised answer and
the green came refreshed
and the wind changed
the character of the clouds
of blue sky new born
and a longing sprung up
trickled, gushed forth
cut its course my heart
for more.
we laugh
join chorus
deep-ached
and wanting
to belong.
holds a pen
in my outsides
it is rain
sparkling fits
of a grey sky
we prayed (like)
old israelites
uplifted you and i
and it poured down
an arch of passion
upon parched land
we
praised answer and
the green came refreshed
and the wind changed
the character of the clouds
of blue sky new born
and a longing sprung up
trickled, gushed forth
cut its course my heart
for more.
we laugh
join chorus
deep-ached
and wanting
to belong.
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