Saturday riff

The beautiful Fallbrook Spring is definitely in our rear view mirror and we are getting into the time of serious summer heat. Still every season has its charms and the Santa Margarita River Valley is beautiful any time of the year, even without the purples of spring.

I was driving home the other day and I saw a blue bird hopping along the high canyon road that I travel on every day leaving and coming home. I wasn't sure if it was a small scrub jay or a bluebird (could have even been a blue grosbeak I suppose) but it had a big blob in its mouth.

I slowed down to take a gander and a big toad jumped out of its beak, free, the bird flew away. I laughed, the bird was definitely fighting outside of its weight class and pay grade. Fight in the dog, not the dog in the fight.

I came home the day before yesterday and there was an osprey on the power pole with a huge fish in its mouth. The sea eagle is such an expert hunter, with its gigantic sharp talons.

I stopped and grabbed my phone but couldn't catch the fish from my angle.

Shame.

The truth is I haven't carried my camera around for about three months. I've been busy and on sabbatical. I am ready to bring it home. Miss shooting, I have missed a lot of good captures.

When I hear people say their cell phone is plenty I have to laugh.

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My bromeliad ballansae is starting to bloom again and fluoresce, three of them right now.

The plant is so happy and spreading like visual wildfire.

Just starting to get the flower spike, which will turn into a giant peppermint tower in a matter of weeks!

Yesterday the cereus started with its beautiful giant blooms under the Pindo Palm.

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My arborist dug this rock up in Rainbow the other day. 

Anybody know what it is? 

I am guessing tourmaline of some kind. Or quartz. But I am not a rockhound.

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This little fellow is popping up in my garden too.  Not quite sure what, yet.

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Todd has been trimming my palms and the place feels good.

I am going to stay home tomorrow and hopefully catch some pictures of birds.

The quail are taking over.

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I walked Los Jilqueros today and tried to recognize the calls of the oak titmouse and bewick's wren,

I respect those people with ears for bird identification.

I don't have it.

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Some current events stuff.

How did an alchemist in the sixteenth century have shards of a mineral that nobody had discovered or had a name for yet?

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Astronauts stranded in space.

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Here's a beauty. Customers who save on electric bills could be forced to pay utility company for lost profits

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At the Burlingame High School Library, a place that is for everything but books apparently.

According to school records, only about 50 books were checked out by students during the 2023 fall semester. In response, the administration has decided to take a different approach, rebranding the library as a student union—a communal space for students to interact and complete school work.

At the beginning of this transition last year, the school moved the College and Career Center into the library. This year, this school is removing any book that has not been checked out for over a decade.

While school officials say the change is meant to cater to student needs and interests, it also feels like a capitulation to the basic fact that many in my generation simply don’t read much anymore...

Fifty books? Why do I find this horrible?

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Speaking of this, some of you know but many do not know that I write educational curriculum for teachers and have been doing so for about twenty years to supplement my income. 

My last course was called Pushing too hard, Fighting Toxic Perfection. It is based on a recent book about how many parents are pushing their kids to excel so much that they are developing mental health problems when they get to college.

I was talking to the college dean I work for the other day and asked how the course was being received? He said that the response was lukewarm, frankly it has not been selling well. I asked him why and I got my own wake up call.

He said that many of the teachers come from public schools in underprivileged areas. If they can get a kid to graduate high school it is a success. Toxic parents pushing kids to overachieve is not a problem there.

I was a scholarship prep school student whose parents valued learning and pushed us to read, from a voluminous home library. But I forget that everybody is not like me. And stupid and ignorant parents tend to raise stupid and ignorant kids, we see it every day.

And it looks like the kids have stopped reading. I am such a dinosaur, I am still pissed off about people talking loudly in the library. State of education is very sad.

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Blond man in ancient Chinese tomb.

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I don't care which side of the aisle you lean politically, we are all sick of the text messages from the national committees looking for money. I made one donation, to Jon Tester and now they won't let me alone, no matter how many times I text STOP. Same with Leslie. This sucks.

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Biologist says evolution moves faster than Darwin. How long ago was Rupert Sheldrake saying this?

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I don't want to get political, there is enough of that out there and you know where to find it. I will say that Netanyahu has no business talking about American protests and calling Americans idiots. I love Israel, want them to exist and survive but he has created a lot of the problems there by not treating the Gazans like human beings. You can't kill a whole people to take care of Hamas. You create a stronger Hamas by doing that. Time for a cease fire and hostage return and you can go back and kill again another day, Bibi... But you might think about a workable solution for both peoples. This one is untenable. And your continual pandering to the uber religious right in this country is both nauseating and divisive.

I don't know where Kamala Harris really is on Israel, I hope she is not a progressive. And I am not sure if she will be elected. But I think she will be tougher on Israel than Biden and I hope she will be smarter than Obama, who was completely clueless on Iran. In any case I hope that Netenyahu stops interfering in our country's political process with his Trumpy crap, he is alienating a lot of Democrats, including many Jewish democrats who love Israel.

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Supervisor Desmond sent out an email yesterday about two battery storage fires in the county unincorporated area. Would be nice to know where and why? And I would feel a lot more comfortable if it was not a private mitigation company in charge of response. Nothing to see here...

Businesses in the surrounding area were put on standby for evacuation while firefighters maintained a 600-foot safety barrier due to dangerous levels of hydrogen. A shelter in place order was also issued to Donovan State Prison, located about half a mile from the storage facility“We went into defensive action. We knew this was a battery storage facility. There’s some toxic gases and high heat that are attributed to that, so we called in extra support with the hazmat unit and the bomb squad to give us the extra tools,” Cornette explained.A special device was used to help monitor air quality levels. Cal Fire and other crews pumped water into the building’s fire suppression system to help douse the lithium-ion batteries.The 250-megawatt Gateway Energy Storage facility is owned by LS Power and operated by subsidiary Rev Renewables. Neither company returned our request for comment as of Thursday.

This is an asterisk point for a future I told you so if I ever saw one. People will be pointing at each other and saying, they were in charge...

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Last night's puff pastry. Spinach mushroom and sausage and apple currant, thanks to RoxAnn for her Dorset apples.