This California Girl is Going (back) to California

Well, it turns out that after all this time and expense and effort, I'll be on my way back to California soon.



I ran the numbers this morning after a few days of indecision, and I just can't afford to stay here on the East Coast looking for work. So, I'll go back home and try again there. I know I hit my head against that particular brick wall for far too long, and it isn't going to be easy to find anything there now, either. But I will at least be on familiar territory.

See, that's the thing. I've been having trouble navigating here. I don't know which way is up - well, which way is North and so forth, and I just don't feel comfortable when I don't know which direction is which. I also often can't get where I want to go because I don't know the area and don't know which buses go where and when.

That aspect of it wasn't too much of a problem in DC itself, actually, but I've been out here in Maryland, about halfway between DC and Baltimore for nearly a week now, and it's just hard to get around. I ran around in circles for about three hours this afternoon trying to figure out how to pay for my train ticket back to California once I made the reservation on the phone. There is no Amtrak station with a ticket agent in the town I'm in right now (Laurel, Maryland). The nearest one is about 10 miles away. I couldn't figure out how to get there on the bus, and it was going to take about two hours each way, anyway, and I really wasn't up for that. And I didn't have a credit or debit card to pay over the phone - if I'd had that, I could have just made the reservation and paid online. That would have been much easier than talking to a computer to make the reservation. And I certainly wasn't going to pay for a taxi to take me those 10 miles and back. I wouldn't have, even if I could have afforded it, which I can't.

Jeez - either someone is sawing something next door, or they're having sex on a bed with a very squeaky mattress. It's only 7:12 p.m. - it's too late for sawing and a little too early to be having that loud of sex.

Sorry or that interruption. To get back to the story - I finally decided that I needed to get a pre-paid debit card so that I could pay for the reservation. See, they would only hold it until tomorrow, but I don't check out of the motel I'm staying at to go back to DC until Friday morning. That was not going to work. One of the motel employees told me where she thought I could buy a pre-paid card within walking distance. I walked down there. No joy. So, walking back up toward the motel, I stopped at a convenience store to ask if they knew where I could get one. And the clerk did know. He told me that they sold them at Family Dollar, and then he said, "and they sell them at 7-11, too. There was another man in there, clearly someone the clerk knew, and he said, "What are you sending her clear up to 7-11 for. That's too far." (It really wasn't too far, but it was farther than Family Dollar, and uphill.) It was kind of cute, and they were very helpful.

This is one of the things I've learned while I've been out here, by the way; most people are more than happy to be helpful if they can be.

So, I walked to Family Dollar, bought the card, came back to the motel and activated it, then called and paid for the train ticket. So, the trip back to California is a done deal, and I'm glad of that. The odd thing is that I haven't been aware of being homesick since I've been here, but now that the decision is made and the ticket is bought, I'm very glad to be going home. Even though there is actually no home to go to out there. It's still home.

But, that whole process took about three hours, from making the reservation to getting the ticket paid for, most of it out in a warm-to-hot sunny day. I've got a lot more stamina than I did when I arrived here, nearly a month ago, but I was tired and hot by the time I got to the motel. Not least, I realized at nearly five p.m., because I hadn't eaten anything all day. This is a problem when I have a problem to solve or a task to accomplish. I start concentrating on that and I completely forget to eat.

So, I had to go out again, walk back over to the Subway sandwich shop, and get dinner. I could have had a peanut butter sandwich, but I decided that just wasn't going to cut it. I've grown fond of that Subway shop since I've been here, although I haven't eaten there every night. They make good sandwiches and the people who work there are friendly. At any rate, now I'm fed, and not so anxious, and have the rest of the evening to relax.

There's be pre-travel things to do tomorrow - primarily doing up the dirty laundry I've accumulated since I've been here and packing to leave the motel on Friday morning, but also trying to figure out if there's anything I can leave behind so that my luggage won't be quite so heavy. I doubt there will be, but I'll unpack everything and repack, and in the process I might find something that isn't essential. That would be a helpful thing, since I've got to drag all that stuff back to DC and onto the train. Thank goodness for checked baggage. However, since I'll be in the train station Friday night, I will have to lug everything around with me all day Friday and part of the day Saturday, until time to actually check the bags.

I'm really not looking forward to the night in the station - another one. It isn't a pleasant place to begin with, and it's positively dismal at night. At least I should have my ticket in hand, so I shouldn't have to try t find places to be all night and can grab a chair in the ticketed passengers section and get a little sleep. The train, though, doesn't leave DC until just past 4 p.m. on Saturday, so that's going to be a long time in the station. If there were a place I could park my bags, I could go sightseeing Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, but that costs too much to even think about. But, I've got knitting, and I can spend some time in McDonald's using the Wi-Fi - I'm going to be in withdrawal across the country, on a train with no Wi-Fi access. Still, I can listen t music and watch DVDs and write - they do have electrical outlets at each seat.

I'm trying not to worry about what happens when I get back to L.A. just yet. There isn't anything I can do about it now. I've already been looking at job listings out there, and trying to see what the possibilities are for a safe place to sleep when I first arrive. But tonight? I think tonight I'm going to take advantage of the motel Wi-Fi, listen to some music, maybe do some writing, and just think that by this time next week I'll be back on the Left Coast...which is the right coast or me.

I just hope it doesn't welcome me home with an earthquake, like it did when I arrived there in March.

Quakes or not, though, I'm a California Girl, through and through.

Today in History: The Longest Cave, Mary Queen of Scots, and California Becomes a State

A few notable events have their anniversaries today. Some are historical in nature.

For example, Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scots, was crowned on this day in 1543 at the age of nine months. She had actually become queen at the age of six days at the death of her father, King James V of Scotland, setting her on the path that would ultimately see her executed by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I of England, as a threat to the English throne on February 8, 1587.

In US history, in 1776 on this day the Continental Congress named the new union the United States. In 1791, the newly established federal city of the United States on the banks of the Potomac River, was named Washington after the first president of the union, giving Washington, DC its name. In 1850, California became the 31st state of the union on this date. In 1942, during World War II, a Japanese floatplane dropped two incendiary bombs on Oregon with the objective of starting a forest fire. It was the first attack by an enemy plane on the continental United States, but it was singularly unsuccessful, with little damage caused.

In slightly more frivolous events, the National Broadcasting Company - NBC - was formed on this day in 1926, while on this day in 1956 Elvis Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

While all of these events hold some interest, more or less, the thing that makes September 9 notable for me is the fact that it is the day in 1972 when the connection between Mammoth Cave System and the Flint Ridge Cave System on an adjoining ridge in Kentucky were shown to be connected, making it the longest cave in the world. The connection was made by a six-person expedition as the culmination of an effort to show a connection of the two cave systems that had begun in 1954. At the time of connection, there were 144.4 miles (232.4 km) of surveyed cave passages in the linked system, enough to make it the world's longest cave. Further explorations and surveys in the system have extended that length to around 400 miles (640 km) of surveyed passages. This cave system is more than twice as long as the second-longest cave system in the world, located in Mexico.

Here is a bit of a documentary that talks about the connection, with interviews with some of the cavers who were on the connection trip. Some of the caving scenes are recreations, but this clip carries the flavor of what it must have been like to be on that trip:



For all that I've only ever been in two caves in my life, Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and Florida Caverns, near Marianna, Florida, I love caves and am fascinated by them. Because I am fascinated by them, when I discovered a book called "The Longest Cave", by Roger Brucker and Richard Watson, on the new books shelf in the library back in 1976, I picked it up immediately and thus found my favorite book in the world. The book tells the story of those years of exploration between 1954 and 1972, written by two of the men who took part in those long years of exploration. Neither one of them were along on the connection trip in 1972, but they tell the full story, including the eventful connection trip. The books make clear that all the explorers over all those years were as much family as colleagues and friends, out not just to find the connection that so many of them believed existed but just to have a good time with friends who shared the same passion for the caves as they did.

"The Longest Cave" is a really good book. If you have any interest at all in caves, in adventure, in exploration, or just in the idea that there is value in doing something because it is enjoyable and joyful and might or might not lead to bigger things, you need to read this book. In fact, I think I need to read it again, because it is just as good after all the times I've read it as it was the first time. It's kind of like going to visit old friends.

Some days, it's all about the weather...

Only in Central California in the summertime.

One of the local weather forecasters just said that it's "a little on the cool side" today. The high here today? 90 degrees F, with forecasts for the next seven days not going any higher than the high 90s.

Well, compared to what it could be, it isn't exactly hot. The record highs here for the next seven days hover between 110 F and 112 F. Now, that's hot.

The 30-year average for today is 98 F. In fact, this is the day in August when the daily averages start their downward trend toward fall and winter after hitting a high average of 99 F during the period from July 13 through August 6. By the end of August, the average high will be down to 95 F, and by the end of September the average high will drop to 86 F. Then, the average high temperature really starts falling; by the end of October it is down to 72 F. This isn't necessarily an indication that things are going to cool off, though, since the latest day in the year with a record high of over 100 F comes on October 5, when the record high is 101 F. Still, it's not nearly as likely to get so hot by October, and the drop in average highs is even steeper in November, when it goes from an average high of 72 F on the first of November to an average high of 59 F on November 31. The period of the lowest average high here runs from December 23 through January 8. But even during that period, the record highs run between 68 F and 73 F.

The things you can find out at Weather.com.

Not that I'm obsessed with weather or anything. It's just that my father was very much interested in the weather, coming from a farming background as he did. In fact, he was able to predict weather trends, at least in Southern California, where he spent most of his life, better than the weather bureau could most of the time. With my father watching the weather all the time, and commenting on it, I suppose it's natural that I got interested in it, as well. These days, I'm mostly interested in it because I live in this place where most of the year it is either too hot or too cold for my taste.

And so, I do things like pay attention to daily weather reports. I joke sometimes that here in Central California's San Joaquin Valley it's always either summer or winter, except for the two weeks of spring and the two weeks of fall we get in April and October, respectively. But, often, that's just about the truth. I've seen it go from winter temperatures to summer temperatures, or the other way around, and stay there, within the space of two or three weeks. This is far from the climate I grew up with in Southern California, where it can pretty much be any given temperature on any day of the year - I've seen it cold and cloudy in July and August, and I've seen it in the 90s on Christmas Day there - but the weather rarely remains the same there for more than a few days at a time. It's what I got used to in my childhood and adolescence, and that is the kind of weather I like. It isn't that way here.

Ah, well. We get what we get, in regard to the weather. And what we've had here today isn't bad. As I write this, at nearly 7 pm local time, it is 86 degrees F outside. There were days at the end of June and through July when the temperature didn't get down that far until well after midnight.

So, today, at least, I'm not going to complain about the weather we've got.

Book Review: West of the West...

I don't usually go around telling people they must read a book. Mainly, that's because I don't generally like people telling me that I must read some that they've just finished reading. I don't mind recommendations, mind you. Love them, in fact. But I just figure that you like what you like, I like what I like, and those two things might not be the same thing.

I'm going to make an exception here. Bet you saw that coming.

Whatever you're doing right now, go out and find a copy of West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders and Killers in the Golden State (Public Affairs, 2009) by Mark Arax, and read it.

Well, finish reading this first, but then go get the book and read it.

West of the West is a spectacular book. It is a series of essays that grew out of Arax's reporting (he was a writer for the Los Angeles Times and is a contributing writer at Los Angeles magazine) and his life. The stories he tells are fascinating, and his writing is graceful without being inaccessible. No matter who or what he writes about, he is present and engaged in the story he is telling.

And he tells a wide variety of stories here. There are several stories about immigrants...from Armenia, from Mexico, from Pakistan, from Vietnam. Besides the immigrants from other countries, he also writes about immigrants to California from other parts of the United States, in a piece called "Last Okie of Lamont", that mourns the passing of the Okies from the town where the labor camp John Steinbeck used as his model for the camp in The Grapes of Wrath was located.

He also writes about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and how it has affected two families in the heart of the state; about Humboldt County, in the north state, where the debate is not whether or not to grow marijuana, but whether to do it in an environmentally responsible way or in a higher-yielding but far-from-green way; about a dairy farmer who only wants to be left alone to provide raw milk products to consumers who wish to buy them.

Arax shows the reader a bit of his own life as well, and in the process perhaps a bit of how he had become able to see the world around him the way he does.

I recently heard Mark Arax speak at a writers group I belong to, and one of the things he said that day struck me as particularly important. He said that it is impossible for a writer to be completely objective, because writers are not robots, but humans. So, the writer's goal is not to be objective, but to be fair. As far as I can see, he has met that goal admirably in these essays. He has a point of view, and he sometimes shares it, but not at the expense of the point of view of others.

Perhaps the reason, or one of the reasons, I like these essays so much is that a fair amount of them strike personal chords for me. I am an Okie on my mother's side of the family, which made much in "Last Okie of Lamont" familiar. My father was an immigrant to this country, so those stories about immigrants made a lot of sense to me, as well, despite the fact that their experiences are really not at all like his in most ways. And he writes more than once here about Fresno and the surrounding area, where he was born and where I live. Some of the places he mentions are places I drive by weekly, if not daily. There are events he explores that I knew as stories in the local news section of the paper when they were taking place.

But this isn't just a "Fresno book" or a "San Joaquin Valley Book", but a book about the California experience. And although Arax has picked and chosen the stories he tells, the real and complete California experience is here. Not the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and not just the big cities and the beautiful people, but the real California. Arax's California is the California where the very poor live cheek-by-jowl with the very rich, where the farmers have to argue with the cities for their water and with the government for their very right to exist, where the most horrible and wonderful things can happen.

Okay. I'm done now.

Go. Read. This. Book.