Tag Archives: NASA

The Middle Matters

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

July 18, 2023, Sacramento- The day spent getting here had a potpourri of interesting stops, at least through the morning.

Ludlow– Holly B. served up a nice plate of scrambled eggs, Polish sausage, home fries and an English muffin, with a caveat: The eggs-and much chicken meat, no longer taste like much, when they come from a large factory farm. She has her own chickens at the small desert farm that she shares with her husband. They roam at will-as any chickens that taste good, and produce delicious eggs, are wont to do.

The others workers at Ludlow Cafe concurred. They, too, are farm folk. We spoke of health issues and I heard them out, about the health scares that have recently troubled their revered chef and their own family members. There is an alkaline taste in the local tap water, likely adding to those issues. Ludlow is at the eastern edge of California’s midsection-which starts at Calexico, on the southern border and zips on through, past Barstow, Bakersfield, Fresno and the ‘M’ cities- Madera, Merced and Modesto, to this bustling capital city, and on up to Redding and Chico, thence to the Oregon line.

Barstow- I decided that the triple digit heat was not going to factor, in making a drive through this often overlooked, but essential, part of the Golden State. In Barstow, where I stopped after checking out of Ludlow Motel, there is a Harvey House, which serves as the city’s Amtrak Station. A Harvey House, of which there are still a few in the West, was a hotel built by Fred Harvey, in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Barstow was seen as a vital link between Los Angeles and the great National Parks of central California-as well as with Death Valley, Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon.

Today, the town soldiers on and keeps this superb building in mint condition. The two ballrooms can be rented for events, and look as if they are waiting for those who can still “trip the light fantastic”.

Railroad Museum, Barstow- at the Harvey House complex.
Harvey House,Barstow
East Ballroom, Harvey House, Barstow
Upstairs, there is a small NASA Museum, focusing on the Sun and planets of “our” Solar System. This montage of Neptune includes a drawing of the outermost planet, (it is actually farther from the Sun than is Pluto), by a young visitor named Paul. I like how he depicted Neptune’s North Pole. Barstow, and the western Mojave, have no shortage of creative talent.

Boron- My last photo-oriented stop of the day was the resurgent home of Twenty Mule Team Borax. I recall, in middle school, that a sometime bully chortled, about yours truly, “He is a low-grade moron, who thinks he lives on boron.” No one laughed at his quip, and I pondered how, besides the two rhyming words, he ever saw himself as clever. We became friends as older teens, though, and he went on to live an exemplary life, before dying just prior to the COVID outbreak. So, I stopped here and took shots of the two active borax mines. Here, for Sean-and in honour of Mr. Reagan, when he hosted “Death Valley Days”, are those sites, from a distance.

West side mine, Boron
East side mine, Boron

Roadside observations- There was much that was unphotographed, but registered in my mind’s camera: The lava beds outside Newberry Springs, extending almost to Daggett, were blocked off by road construction at Newberry. Joshua Trees, the standout feature of the Mojave Desert, are plentiful in some areas and scarce in others. There is a huge stand of them, just north of the City of Mojave, west of Bakersfield. The latter-mentioned city pays proper homage to two of its great musical talents: Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, with streets named for both gentlemen and centers that showcase their respective life’s work. Fresno, and the three ‘Ms’, focus a fair amount of their agricultural wealth on education. Fresno is as much worthy of mention for its health care system, as for its farming.

A horrid accident, on the opposite side of road from us, stopped south bound traffic from the north side of Turlock, clear to the south end of Modesto. Our side of Highway 99 experienced a slowing, but mostly because of the need to position emergency vehicles opposite the crash site. Two vehicles were mangled, one of them lying upside down in the middle of the road.

I got to HI Sacramento around 6 p.m. and after struggling to get the parking lot gate open, due to solar flares interfering with the radio frequency of the gate’s system, enjoyed a lovely carnitas and black bean salad at La Cosecha, three blocks south of the hostel.

No assessment of life anywhere can fail to include its midsection-and California’s Central Valley is second to none.

On Oracle Road

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Posted by on in Social

This is a repost from Xanga, but it expresses my feelings about what went down a year ago, in Tucson.  My site, my rules.

A year has now come and gone.  The Tucson shooting rampage has had its predictable First Anniversary media blitz.   Congresswoman Giffords is on the road to recovery, and may well run for reelection.  Her husband is at her side, as he has been, to the extent possible, all along.  The families of those killed grieve on and virtually all are giving back to the community which stood by them.  The President is silent, and suitably so.  He needs to stay in the background for this one.  The wounded progress and live their lives in the way that best suits each of them.

I read through the entire newspaper segment on how each of them are doing.  It is a low day for me, for obvious reasons- a trigger, but I made it through, just because I could.

The media did not have to look far to find a gadfly to the hoopla.  He is George Morris, widower of one of the slaying victims.  He blames Mark Kelly for his wife’s death, for not having provided security on that day.  I am sorry for your loss, Mr. Morris.  I know what it’s like to have lost a soul mate.  Contrary to your understanding, though, let me point out something:  The spouse of a congressperson is not  who provides security at congressional events.  My Congressman, Paul Gosar, provides his own security, through his office budget.  I believe it’s the same across the institution.  Ms. Giffords most likely had no idea she would be attacked at a minimall.

He also faults Kelly for “going off into space”, while his wife was in the hospital.  Fact is, that space flight was a GROUP decision.  Ms. Giffords, Kelly’s daughters, both sets of parents and NASA all weighed in on the pros and cons.  It was his last flight, so to him, it was six or a half-dozen.  Since Morris regards Ms. Giffords as “worthless”, how would the space flight matter.

Well, grief leads people to say strange things.  This, I know.  Personally, I grieve for the Tucson victims, also.  I grieve for Judge Roll, Gabe Zimmerman, Mr. Stoddard, Mrs. Schneck, Christina-Taylor Green and for George Morris’s wife, Dorothy.  Each had a good life ahead.  If Judge Roll had lived, he’d have seen the courthouse he planned for Yuma get built.  If Gabe had lived, he’d be the one coaching Ms. Giffords back to health and might have been a fine surrogate candidate, had she been unable to run.  If Mr. Stoddard and Mrs. Schneck had lived, they’d have seen their grandkids on to higher levels of achievement.  If Christina-Taylor had lived, the sky would have been the limit,  If Dorothy Morris had lived, perhaps George would have had the chance to clear the air with his Congresswoman, instead of lashing out at her now.

We’re all adults here, so I sense Ms. Giffords half-expects to get some tongue-lashings from the disgruntled among us, even as she works on recovery.  Such is life in the public eye.  The vast majority of Americans, however, are pouring out good will, and not because we’re media sheep.  It’s because we’re human and the hurt of one, or of the few, is the hurt of all.

The scene we see today, on Oracle Road, is of a memorial.  For a long time to come, may its cause not be repeated.