A break in the June Gloom

Clouds are not a curiosity in Southern California. We have low clouds all the time. In fact, we are in our season of what we call May Gray, proceeding now into what we call June Gloom. We sit next to the Pacific Ocean, and it interacts with the atmosphere this time of year to create a "marine layer" which is a deck of fog-level clouds that sit over us from dawn to midday and sometimes longer.

But rarely, like today, we get a distant weather feature called an offshore low, that can bring us clouds like these. Today's low was sitting off the coast, 600 miles west of San Francisco, with no jet stream to guide it anywhere. Rotating around this low were bands of moisture and instability that actually brought rain, wind, thunder and lightning to parts of Southern California today. The local news opened with a five-minute story on this weather. We saw none at our house, however. I have a long reputation as a reverse Joe Btfsplk, the Li'l Abner character who always had a storm cloud over his head. Wherever I travel, even in summer in Tornado Alley, and how much I hope for stormy weather, clear skies always follow me.


But these clouds were fine. After general clouds all day, these thoroughbreds showed up about 5 p.m. They were gorgeous.


And a few seconds after I snapped this last image, I felt a drop of rain on my left forearm. Only one.

A first-rate mockingbird

Every morning, for the last several mornings, on a telephone pole down the hill from us, sits a mockingbird I wish Atticus Finch could see.

Atticus is, of course, the memorable lead character, memorably played by Gregory Peck, in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” A scene comes where Atticus is explaining to his children, Jem and Scout, his way with guns. He says: “I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
“Why?” says Jem.
“Well,” Atticus says, “I reckon because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat people's gardens, don't nest in the corncrib, they don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out for us.”

This singer down on the telephone pole, he is pure mockingbird. He chirps, tweets, trills, imitates motors, makes a noise like a cane stick dragged across a washboard. Singing his heart out. When it gets too much for him, which is about once a minute, he leaps into the air, rising several feet on a fluttering of his wings with their distinctive white chevron markings and then settles back to his perch, never missing a beat.

Some Texan from the past had the good sense to claim the mockingbird as the State Bird of Texas. Things have felt very much like Texas around our house the past few days, with the breeze already warm even before sunup, the Texas privet in bloom, and the mockingbird partying down on the telephone pole. He seems to like it there. Lots of bird types perch on that pole – hawks, crows, sparrows, finches. But they come and go. Our mockingbird has occupied the pole exclusively since last weekend. Once a couple of sparrows approached, landing on braces below the beam where the mockingbird was singing away. I got the impression that the sparrows wanted him to shut up, and were going to team up on him. They advanced upward, but the mockingbird turned to meet them, and away they flew, either intimidated or unable to stand the decibel level.

Of course at night, the mockingbird becomes a party animal. Sometimes a mockingbird will take a midnight shine to the bottlebrush tree at the corner of the house and sing the night away. A person trying to sleep can become sparrowish toward such behavior. This has not happened since Karen and I have been married, but she recalls times when she would go outside at 2 a.m. and heave rocks into trees toward the music. I don’t object to this – I don’t think Gregory Peck could kill a mockingbird with a rock in the middle of the night – but it’s not something I would do. I hold a fondness for a bird that would stay up and sing all night. It wouldn’t be a sin, but maybe, for me, a transgression, to diss a mockingbird.

Sunset, moonrise

A couple of times a year, the sun sets at Alta Mira, and the moon rises, almost at the same time. But only every two or three years, if we are lucky, does the sun set and the moon rise in a way that forces us to make a choice. Last night was such a night. The sun and moon were both so compelling, in their departure and arrival, that you had to choose your compulsion. As you did, you had to turn your back on the other. No way to have both at the same time. These events represent proof of something my grandmother Susie always said. "You can't have it all." I don't know if she learned that by watching sunsets and moonrises in her native Alabama, or adopted Texas, but I can speak to her from Southern California and tell her what she said was true.

Actually, I missed the best shot of all. I was watching events from the glider when I looked at the clouds in the east and thought I saw something huge and white. I wasn't looking for it, so its size shocked me. I realized it was the moon, emerging. I ran for the camera and got the image above, which isn't half as dramatic as what I had seen seconds before. But it wasn't bad. Then I turned my back on the moon and shot the sun. Moon and sun, looming through clouds and trees.

And back to the moon, starting to emerge. The moon plays optical tricks, depending on what it is near. Here, it does not appear nearly so large as when I first saw it. At that moment, it looked as big as a planet.

And up she came.

Another evening like this will be along again in a couple of years. Maybe sooner. The planet, in presenting its grandeur, always likes it to be a surprise.

Killer Storm Looms!

I know, it is not easy being a weathercaster in Southern California, a desert next to a mammoth ocean with a cold current running offshore the length of the entire Pacific Coast. As a native Texan weather freak, I try to keep that in mind on mornings like these. For the last four days, the weather burons have advertised "a quick return to winter weather," with a vigorous trough racing southward bringing high winds and some rain, maybe half an inch, starting Saturday night and continuing through Sunday. This morning at 2 I awoke and listened for rain hitting the roof. Didn't hear any. I was disappointed. Texas weather freaks gear up for a promise of storminess the same way 11-year-old girls gear up for a Hannah Montana concert. It is goofy, I know, but it is just within us to go outside with the thunder booming and grin into the gale. We take great pleasure in anticipating same. Frequently, however, in Southern California, a Texan's hopes are dashed. It is idiotic to feel disappointment with the sort of weather I got to view when I went outside this morning. On the other hand, we get to see this almost every day.

The weather burons online insist the front will race through today. Or maybe it has already raced through so fast that no one saw it, not even the Doppler Radar. Now it is March 22, and this event most certainly would have been the last of our rainy season. The Southern California weather freaks can put their hopes away, the same way Easterners store their snowshoes. If you want a closer look at how nice it was this morning, click on the image, then click the Back arrow to return here.

Look! It's the spring equinox!

Here is the moment of sunrise this morning, March 20, marking the first day of spring.

Damn near the spring equinox

This is the morning of March 19, a day before the spring equinox, and I thought I better get pictures because the weather bureau says there is a good chance it will be cloudy tomorrow morning. I took this image before the real sunrise began because of the fog plopped into the valley and because of the contrails left by early morning flights.

I don't know if it is airliner Grand Central Station out there every morning, but the contrails show that kind of traffic present today. These flights are headed east, north, and south.

Here is the moment when the sun for several seconds is like a diamond on the rim of the world. You can see it is about to transit a horizon feature that we call Dolly's Right One at Five. I hope I can show you exactly where it comes up tomorrow, the actual equinox, but there may be clouds, you know.

And here is the almost-equinox moment of sunrise on the left, showing the distance across the horizon the sun has traveled since Dec. 21, when it rose out of Tut's eye, at the far right. As always, click on the image for a closer view. Then click the Back arrow to return here.

The March Moon, almost full

Click on the images for an up-close look. What a planet we have.

Universe again neglects needs of human photo taker

I am always on the watch for what I call the "proscenium effect" after a rainstorm. You have seen a proscenium effect ("proscenium" means the wall that separates the stage from the audience and makes an arch over it) if you have ever sat in a theater with darkness overhead and darkness below and a wonderful slash of light coming from the stage. Tonight looked like a good bet. The back edge of the storm was moving inland from the ocean just as the sun was dropping into position to light up the eastern horizon. But then the overhead lighting director fell asleep and let the black ceiling break into clouds and sky. Imagine if the sky above the house in this photo was a black ceiling. That would put the house into the proscenium effect I keep watching for.

It didn't happen, but I can't complain too much about the result. Below, I cheated some with a tight shot to take out the blue sky, and it gives an idea what a good proscenium effect might look like. You can only do so much with the timing of these things.

And on the gazillionth day, God created digital cameras

Lighting up Dolly's Right One

This is from yesterday morning, Feb. 11. That line of cloud is the contrail of a jetliner, headed for Los Angeles from South America. Every morning, that contrail appears and provides me a terrific lift before my day even begins. I am so happy not to be on that airplane.


Earlier this week, the Sun began its transit of Dolly's Right One, which is the most prominent feature in the Alta Mira Calendar. Through binoculars or a telephoto lens, the Sun, just as it begins to appear, lights up the distant ridgeline as if it had caught fire. On some mornings you can see the silhouettes of individual trees outlined for an instant against the brilliance. The sequence below offers a glimpse of that presence. In the top photo, you can just see the first speck of Sun, then the ridge catches fire, and then the Sun appears. The last photo is pulled back to show Tut on the right as a reference of where we are on the calendar. This morning, the Sun would have transited the summit of Dolly's Right One, but it was cloudy, darn it. For a closer look, you can click on the photos to expand them.

The weather dreamers were right this time

I can’t bitch about the weather this week. In my last post, Saturday morning, the weather dreamers had forecast rain and possible thunderstorms. All the thunderstorms in Southern California are “isolated,” so you have to be near that isolation to notice any effect. At noon on Saturday an isolated thunderstorm approached from the southwest and found our house. We had rain, lightning, thunder and hail. I turned the rocker around toward the windows and watched it for almost an hour.

It was not a thunderstorm in the biblical sense. Coincidentally, on Saturday, both my children, Jessie and Tyler, were in San Diego, not at our house, but close enough (Jamul) to share this storm and possibly comment on it. When they were little, we were together on a visit to Abilene when they encountered, and remember, the kind of thunderstorm that I admire. It was summertime, a perfectly still day with stunning humidity. They were at my grandmother’s house, and I was watching my uncle play in a golf tournament.

At about 2:30, north of us, thunderheads shot into the sky as if launched from the earth. By 3, the base of those clouds was black and reached to the ground. I judged I had maybe 15 minutes to get home before it hit. I was a couple of minutes late. Our block was a black box shaking with thunder, lightning, rain and wind when I piled through the screen door onto the porch. I yelled to Jessie and Tyler to come out to the porch and watch. But they were inside, on the floor behind the couch. Trying to crawl UNDER the couch.

By comparison, the storm on Saturday was a polite cough. But still it set a record for me as a Californian. Never in 35 years’ residency here had I been in a storm that lasted an hour. The lightning, all cloud-to-cloud, stayed directly overhead and gave instant thunder. It HAILED. Nothing you would report to the paper. “BB-sized hail pummels La Mesa residence.” The pellets were tiny and jumped in a darting fashion, like ice fleas, as they hit the ground. It was hail, all the same. I have pictures, and I will post them when I get a minute. I am writing this from my office at school.

Jessie and Tyler were here on a sad weekend, after the death of their stepfather. He was a builder, and loved the outdoors, and the avocado groves he brought to life on the slopes below their house. I hope the storm brought significance to his family and their memories and stories of him. I know it was ironic that Jessie and Tyler should be close, all these years after that Abilene afternoon, at the time a storm set a record for me in San Diego.

The month of purple flowers dawns

On the Alta Mira Calendar, on the morning of Feb. 1, the sun rises out of the top of the head of the Bust of George Washington. Below you see our old friend, the Mummy of King Tut, at the right side of the photo: his head, then his folded arms, then his feet poking up. His feet are pointing at the Bust of George Washington, whose head is at the left edge of the photo, and then his torso.


On Dec. 21, the morning of the Winter Solstice, the sun rose out of Tut's eye, below, and then began its long trek northward across the planet's face and, as we see it from the porch, across the features of the Alta Mira Calendar.



This morning, we reached Feb. 1 on that trek, and the sun rose out of the head of the Bust of George Washington. I can hear you thinking, why do I give a rat's patoot where the sun comes up from the porch of a doofus living in California? Well, I too wish the Alta Mira Calendar had some sort of Stonehengian oompf, that the sunrise on Feb. 1 lined up with something eerie or important. But it doesn't. At least as far as I know. I do think it is cool that the Alta Mira Calendar has been accurate for millions of years, patiently waiting for a doofus with a camera to come along and prove it to a waiting world. Something else I think is cool. When the sun first peeks over the ridge, for a long instant or two, you can look straight at it and note its brilliance. It looks exactly like a blazing, bazillion-carat diamond. I see it as a diamond on the rim of the world, connoting the marriage of the sun and the earth, together about to create another day and all the life that goes with it on this tiny dot in the universe.

Among those creations, around here anyway, are streams of purple flowers, a variety of iceplant or succulent that goes nuts in February, cascading like bridal trains across our hillsides and highways. It is the Southern California version of the Texas bluebonnets, which will be hiding from the icy northern winds for another six weeks or so. These are outside our front door. I wanted to get Gulliver in the shot, but you know about dogs and holding still.

Boiling ocean threatens to claim innocent Mexican island

No, that is not snow. That is the Pacific Ocean in a sunstorm. We have been hit by another one. It started last night. As I took this picture, the temperature on the porch was 85 degrees. This is JANUARY 30! This week, San Diegans have been wondering why the Super Bowl isn't played here every year. The NFL says it's because our stadium isn't up to standards, i.e. can't seat a minimum of 10,000 people in luxury boxes. That is true, but the real reason is that a lot of us pay quietly into a fund which pays lobbyists to influence the NFL to play the Super Bowl in places like Tampa Bay because if they play it here, television will show people in the East (average Jan. 30 temperature: 2) pictures like the one above and they will ALL MOVE OUT HERE. We don't have room for them.

Sunset stages

Saturday night, 5:15 . . .

Saturday night, 5:35 . . .

Saturday night, 5:40.

A better butter sunset

The Sun in California has its particular ways of setting into the ocean. From our house, it provides us this treat for about a third of the year. In the lower photo, see the dark mass arrowing into the Pacific from the right? That is Point Loma. The Sun in a few more weeks will transit Point Loma, and until late in the fall, all our sunsets will be over land. I always watch for the Point Loma transit, because it is so cool to watch, but it can be hard to catch. I hope I can post a transit photo when the time comes.

In the meantime, what we have here, from last night, is the maximum butter puddle effect. I have never seen one like this. On some evenings the Sun gives the appearance of a cool ball of butter spreading out into the warm ocean. The actual facts are the opposite, a hot Sun contacting a very cold ocean, thanks to a cold and deep Alaskan current that protects San Diego from the summer and fall Pacific hurricanes that move northward from the Mexican coasts until they hit that current and fall apart. I have mixed feelings about this. I would love three or four tropical storms a year, but they never get here.

But I never argue with the ways Nature chooses to present beauty to me, and every way unique. If Nature can cause a hot Sun to puddle like butter into a cold ocean, hooray. I have been watching sunsets from this location for 20 years, no two alike. This is the first butter puddle effect that sustained itself so long. And that doesn't count the melting of the ball into the puddle. The effect you see, which looks for all the world like a bright city on the horizon, was in sight for almost two minutes. If you want a closer look, click on the photos and they will expand.

On the move this morning

I'm sitting outside on a Sunday morning, enjoying dawn events at a time when the world appears most perfectly still.

Then I go inside and read in the paper that astronomers have made a new discovery that has changed the way they must think about the universe. I would hate to be an astronomer. They work their tails off for five or six years, trying to understand the universe as it now appears. It is reported to be very hard work, bordering on the unfathomable. They keep at it, because that is what they do. Then comes a "new discovery" that, overnight, forces them to change the way they think about the universe. What kind of life is that?

The new discovery this time is the speed at which our solar system – the Sun and planets – orbits the center of the Milky Way. Before, they thought that speed was about half a million miles an hour. Now they believe it to be nearer 600,000 miles an hour, and not only that, the Milky Way apparently is actually broader and has 50 per cent more mass than was previously believed. The Milky Way has been up there for millions of years, and scientists have been looking at it hard for at least 100 years, and until now they didn't know any better than this how fast it was spinning, how big it was, and how dense it was.

But that's another story. My immediate interest is in going back outside to the glider, sitting perfectly still, feeling a bit of breeze, seeing only a couple of cars on the freeway in the distance. But now the story has reminded me of something scientific that I heard decades ago, that the Earth is moving in nine different directions at once. Therefore, so am I. I am remembering this at the moment the Sun rises (now below Tut's folded hands). Of course the Sun only appears to rise. What has actually happened is that the Earth is spinning from west to east, and it has just spun east far enough to let me see the Sun.

The Earth is 24,000 miles, roughly, in diameter. That means in 24 hours, the planet has rotated from where it was at yesterday's dawn, full circle to this dawn. It is rotating from west to east at a speed of 1,000 miles per hour, and me along with it. Sitting here perfectly still on the glider, I am riding a Tilt-a-Whirl going 1,000 miles an hour.

And of course the Earth is moving around the sun, giving us seasons, and the Winter Solstice at Tut's eye, and so forth. I know it takes 365 days (plus a fraction) for the Earth to circle the Sun, but I don't know how far it is. For this, I need Google.

Google takes me to the Astronomy Café, operated by Dr. Sten Odenwald, whom I take the liberty of quoting:

"The speed of the Earth in its orbit around the sun is 29.79 kilometers per second. The Sun and the solar system are, in turn, in orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The orbit takes about 225 million years and currently the direction of this motion is in the general direction of the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra The Harp. The speed of this motion relative to stars near the Sun is 19.7 kilometers per second, however, the Sun and Vega along with other local stars are orbiting the center of the Milky Way at a speed of 225 kilometers per second. The entire Milky Way is, in turn, in orbit around the Virgo cluster of galaxies located 19 million parsecs away. The speed of this motion is about 365 kilometers per second."

I have yet to make the intellectual shift from miles to kilometers, so I ask Google to provide me a converter from kph to mph, and compliance is, of course, instant. Thus: The Earth is orbiting the Sun at 66,638 mph. I skipped the "speed of this motion relative to stars near the Sun" because I didn't understand a word of it. Then we come to the speed of our solar system around the center of the galaxy, which translates in Dr. Odenwald's reckoning to 502,311 mph, but of course that is an old figure replaced this morning by the new reckoning of about 600,000 mph. Then the entire Milky Way is in orbit around "the Virgo cluster" at a speed of 816,482 mph.

So in my dawn repose on the glider, I am simultaneously moving at speeds of 1,000 mph, 66,638 mph, 600,000 mph, and 816,482 mph, in directions unknown to me except for east. Not accounted for is the speed at which "the Virgo cluster" is orbiting something, and what that something is orbiting, but that's okay because my head is spinning much too fast to care.

No, we can't go around again

The airplane you see is on approach to San Diego's Lindbergh Field. Imagine the colors in the cabin.

Flight paths

On Jan. 25, 1998, the Super Bowl was played at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego (Broncos 31, Packers 24). I heard fireworks in the distance just before kickoff and ran out onto the patio and looked west in the direction of the stadium. Couldn't see the fireworks.

But then I turned around and glanced at the eastern horizon and saw a black slot in the sky, like a slot you would slide an ATM card into to get money. I was not drunk or anything. The slot was moving toward me, getting bigger. It was too late to run for the camera, or to run, period. In seconds, the slot turned into a black Stealth bomber. It flew directly overhead, not even a thousand feet off the ground, huge, blocking out sky like the ship in "Independence Day." It was aimed right for the stadium. I ran back inside and you should have heard the roar from the stadium as it approached and did its stadium flyby. God, I wish I had a picture of that thing going over.

Alta Mira is directly underneath the flight path for stadium flybys. Only once was it the Stealth. Other times it has been four jet fighters. We hear their engines first, then run out and see them in a wide loop to the east, trailing white smoke. Then they straighten out, jack up the thunder, and go over the house toward the stadium at 500 miles an hour.

Last week, it was a blimp, maneuvering before the Holiday Bowl at the stadium. I saw him far to the south, then he turned north, still considerably east of us. But close enough to hope. I ran for the camera and got him just as he was overflying a horizon feature that we call Dolly's Right One.

"Turn left," I whispered at him. I wanted him to take a path that would go right in front of the house. It would be a great picture, and I wanted to see what Gully would do. I do, from years ago, have an ancient print photo of the late, great, Barkeley vigorously warning a Sanyo blimp, that I could have hit with a BB gun, not to come an inch closer. The things puppies get to bark at, when they have the sky for a yard. But the blimp's captain, determined to aggravate puppies to the north of us, stayed on that course until he disappeared behind the bottlebrush tree.

But he did do me the favor of reminding me it was Holiday Bowl day, so 15 minutes before kickoff I was outside with the camera, watching. No jets this time, but there did appear a couple of other aviators. One of them headed for me as if he had it in mind to fly through the front door into our living room. That happens sometimes, with sparrows and finches and hummingbirds, who are relatively easy to corner and scoop up and return to the outdoors. This guy, though, I wasn't so sure.

On he came, magnificent in his control of the air. Then he gave a little left-turn twitch of his tailfeathers, and a slight change in pitch of the pinfeathers at the tips of his wings (maybe for stabilization, maybe just to show off, like jet pilots cutting in afterburners), and he sailed past close enough to rattle me into cutting off the tip of a wing. For a flyby, it wasn't bad.

The sky did give us one little supersonic shot before sundown, a ray finding a Christmas tree ornament and blasting color onto the kitchen ceiling. A promise of flybys to come, I figured.

Summer is way off to the left, there

Above is the solstice sunrise on Dec. 21, when the sun rose out of Tut's eye. Just to the left of the sun, you see Tut's cute little upturned nose, way too upturned, some might say, for a mummy, but we had nothing to say about it.



Now here is this morning's sunrise, Dec. 28, one week after the solstice, and the sun rose right on the bridge of Tut's nose. Imagine you were looking at this picture on this morning one million years ago, and how happy you would feel. The sun is coming back! It will be swimsuit season in no time.

Getting around to answering comments

I have made an executive decision about my blog. I will always read all of the comments to any specific blog, but I won't reply to them via another comment to that specific blog.

There are three reasons for this. One, the blog software won't let me post my comment without a username and password, and I refuse those terms for posting a comment to my OWN BLOG.

Second, the software refuses my password when I attempt to post the comment, and it is the same password with which I log in to Blogger. Long short stories, novels, movies, sitcoms and docudramas are written about this level of insanity.

Third, a blog starts to age the instant it is posted. I don't know why a reader should be asked to check an old blog for new comments. Part of this is my newspaper background, in which all news shortly after dawn becomes fishwrap, and part is my aversion to asking readers to go into the stacks to find responses to their comments.

There is a fourth factor. Blogger sends copies of comments to my personal email, but WON'T LET ME RESPOND TO THE EMAIL. Do you see a pattern here? If you do, please let me know what it is.

These things being so, I have decided to respond to comments in new posts. Like this one. Ray, I don't know how many draws we ate to at Lavender's, but every one was competitive, fair, cheap, filling, and fulfilling. I wish we could do it again, give you one last chance to win, but I know I would be full after one chicken-fried steak, a few potatoes, some green beans, and one roll. Hell yes, I have all the Elvis 45s. I do remember nearly ripping a stitch at the Paramount, and I still play the guitar, sort of, and sing, REALLY sort of, but if you want to hear a Grant play the guitar, listen to Tyler, as you already know. He is arriving tonight for the holidays, and I imagine in the next day or two he will bring his guitar over and we will play the same songs I was playing in 1959. Did I already mention he is the 2008 National Flatpicking Guitar Champion of the United States of America? I did?

Jen, you said you were still interested in the sunset story. I would like to tell you more. What are you interested in? Jessie, my daughter, will be here next week for Christmas, and she promises to show me how to insert photos into stories where they should go, and not where Blogger puts them by default. Just for the heck of it, at the top of this blog, is a photo of the dawn after all the rain we had. There is in that photo, and in many others, evidence of living suspended between earth and space, which is a big part of the ongoing sunset story. I'll be blogging soon about the business of living between earth and space. It has been my address since 1992.