Searching for the King of the Sea Monsters

Kids are great. Mostly. Well...mine are great.

I've found that since I stopped being a dick, my relationship with my boy has blossomed. He's no longer a dick; he's nicer to his sister; I don't have to yell at him anymore...it's amazing how powerful adjusting my own attitude has been.

Maybe I'm being too hard on myself.

In any case, the other day we were checking out a cool dinosaur-and-other-prehistoric-beast book (that uses a spindly sans-serif fonts for blocks of text they occasionally print over photos of OCEAN SURFACE) and we came across a picture of dunkleosteus:

Coming into its position as apex predator nearly 350 million years ago during the Devonian Period, this placoderm---er, armored fish and an early jawed critter---swam around taking bites out of whatever it felt like, even fellow dunkleosteus. It didn't have teeth, rather that bony-jaw-armor was actually sharp bitey-bone, and its jaw would snap shut like a paper cutter so fast the biteforce was nearly the same the T-rex. At 30 feet long (!!), this thing only feared other specimens of it's own species, and a proliferation of harmful algal blooms that would eventually choke off its oxygen supply and hasten its extinction.

In an odd twist, as a lobe-finned fish, the descendants of its tetrapod cousins would become us, and not the ray-finned fish that are the vast majority of fish in today's oceans.

My son was immediately obsessed with this sea monster. It had to be the coolest, toughest, and BEST sea monster ever. NOTHING could ever challenge its primacy as far as sea monsters are concerned.

Well, I challenged him, what about the mosasaur we watched the program about a while back? That was a pretty badass sea monster, too, right? A glint in his eye: recognition. The mosasaur...he said, his voice trailing as he tried to imagine the two meeting.

A few pages later in the very same book we found the spread about the mosasaur. It grew to it's status as apex predator and all-around badasss sea monster about 300 million years later, around 50 million years ago, after the non-avian dinosaurs had all vanished. The largest of which ticked the measuring stick around 50 feet (!!), meaning it was even bigger than dunkleosteus.

This bothered my son, as he clung to his feelings that dunkleosteus had to be the best. I mean, he doesn't even have teeth, rather sharp bone-blades that she snaps down as hard as T-rex, man! Also, I think he loved saying dunkleosteus, which is amusing, because he liked saying mosasaur also.

We concluded the mosasaur portion of the search with, "Well, it may have come down to whomever got the first bite it, because ol' dunkster could probably do plenty of damage with that chomper." 

This was satisfying until I reminded him an even older obsession of his in these matters: megalodon:

No glint in his eye this time, rather a full-on sparkle. Megalodon! That would show that mosasaur! A proper fish and all, megalodon roamed the seas around 25 million years ago, after the mosasaurs disappeared, and long after the end of the Devonian.

Clocking in at 65 feet long it was truly enormous. Would dunkleosteus just be a meal for this giant predator?

I tried to explain that this wasn't really a competition, since the disparate eras in which these beasts existed, and that it was okay to revere all of them. And that we should be excited that such cool monsters ever existed at all, and that we know about them.

AND, oddly enough, with dunkleosteus and mosasaur being nearly certain and mostly guessed for megalodon: it looks like all three gave live birth.

After this talk and realization, the day's activities went to his Hot Wheels experiments and which cars went however far through his rubber band-powered loop-de-loop.

I'll save xiphactinus and liopleurodon for next time. Turns out we watch our share (and many others, it sounds like) of ancient oceans and ancient earth science shows on Curiosity Stream.

That I can name five ancient sea monsters off the top of my head, along with basic facts like size and appearance (dunkleosteus, xiphactinus, mosasaur, liopleurodon, and megalodon) but couldn't tell you all of the Kardashian siblings names probably tells you how my screen time is spent...

Kindergarten Comes Once for us All

My son had his first day of kindergarten a few weeks ago, and while I saw many people posting pictures of their kids' first days of school, I refrained. Social media was flooded with those kinds of pics, and I felt like I needed to zig while everyone else zagged. Or some other cliché...

But, here I am, on my own thing, celebrating my awesome little dude, on his first day of kinder:

He had his hair shaved into the Travis Bickle for the mohawk effect, and does well by his masks. He's so big and tall, but you only really notice when he's around his friends, being nearly a head taller than most everyone at school.

His compassion is strong, and the violence against sister is mostly incidental and not by design. He's awesome and I love him more than just about every single thing in this universe. He's my favorite dude, and I hope that he starts to understand that we need him to infiltrate the patriarchy from the inside, as that's the only way we're going to bring it down.

We tell it to him all the time, so time will tell whether he's buying the message.

Keep loving books, Boy!

Random Writing Nonense

I was reading my Sunday paper this past Sunday and when I opened up to the book review section, a face was staring back at me:

The review was for Sally Rooney's newest book, but I am/was mostly unfamiliar with her work. The article writer mentioned that the galleys of Ms. Rooney's breakout work, Conversations with Friends, was well-worn when given to her, and it was suggested that as another young-millennial-lady, she'd likely enjoy it.

She did not at the time do so, and I was reminded of a Matt Groening "Life in Hell" comic strip about modern artistic types, with a category titled "How to Annoy Them" that I loved:

The one I usually think about is the Poet, and how to annoy a poet? Well:

Anyway, while reading this article, the idea of a 24 year old writer shooting to stardom caused mixed feelings in me: part envy, obviously, but then again I'd have to finish something worthy of attention, so...; and excitement, since non-genre writing can be a viable art-form for making a living (and maybe because it means people still read..?).

But I was looking at the picture of Ms. Sally Rooney, and I aid to myself: This girl isn't an American. I had a feeling, based on how she looked in the article's portrait, that I knew from which country she came. I made a guess, and then I looked it up.

And I was correct. She's from Ireland. Once that info hit me, whatever envy I had went away (for some reason) because to me that just made sense. I'm reading a novel right now written by an Irish lady, and Irish writers have figured prominently in English language literature for, eh, ever?

But I started to think back to this meme I sent my dad, in reference to a conversation we had once:

My dad and I talk about many things, but a few themes will usually emerge: the Simpsons; the Yankees; and literature. He had a contention one (and still may hold it) that if you were to rank countries or nationalities by how much they loved---or felt like they defined themselves through---their literature, that Russia would be in first place, while America would be whatever place last was.

The accuracy of that statement isn't the focus here, because, well, my dad is usually right about these kinds of thing and I haven't read enough Russian or French lit to make a sound judgement.

What I want to say is: where's the Irish literature joke in that meme? I mean, those aren't really jokes as much as generalizations, albeit silly ones. But like, it would be hard to discuss the Western canon of literature without the Irish contingent mentioned. (Also, is Russian really "Western canon" and not somehow an amalgam of Western and Eastern? Is that something inherently different about the content?) 

I even started to think about a bracket-type setup, but I didn't want to go into too many details.

But just going off the top of my head:

Irish:

• Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Beckett, Yeats, Flann O'Brian, Anna Burns

English:

• Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, Orwell, Woolf, Jane freaking Austen, Shelley

French:

• Voltaire, Baudelaire, Hugo, Flaubert, Dumas, Sartre, Camus (he counts, right?)

American:

• Melville, Twain, Whitman, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Pynchon

Russian:

• Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn

One major problem here is that the list above is almost entirely cis-gendered white men. Yikes. Literature must do better. That's another reason I didn't want to dive too deep here: it shows off some flaws in the historical record of an artform I feel I'm umbrellaed under.

Now that I've typed this nonsense up, maybe I can go back to going about my day, able to see different writers names up under national identities, all the while asking myself, where do the Bronte sisters go? They're Irish by birth, but grew up in and wrote mainly about, England...

Some Books from the Trip

As things get hectic with everything, I wanted to mention a few books I either were given, picked up, or were refocused upon during our northern excursion of (check notes) only a few weeks ago.

Firstly was a handover from Norm:

I read over the first page or so and got very excited to check it out. Norm and I joked about the current discourse surrounding Murakami and the women in his stories, and the back cover synopsis looks like it wouldn't do much to, or even attempt to, stifle that conversation, but...if Murakami is up to his usual tricks otherwise, that seems to paper over some of the complaints.

At the Cabin itself were a few copies of Cliff's Notes, the high school aid that helps students try to warp their head's around various works of literature. One was for Gatsby. I thumbed through it, and was intrigued by the four page summary of Fitzgerald's life. There was plenty of information I'd never known. I didn't bother with the summary, but thought about finding an old copy ad checking it out, to see if all the fuss is warranted.

Another edition of Cliff's Notes was for Wuthering Heights. Again I read the author bio, but was struck by something in the intro: on occasion Wuthering Heights has been considered ne of the greatest works in English.

Say WHAT? I mentioned that to Corrie, and said, "Yeah, I think I remember hearing that in high school somewhere."

I made sure to dust off my copy once I got home:

As a birthday gift one year my Uncle Mark got me a copies of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, written by Charlotte and Emily Bronte, with matchy-matchy dust covers. I thought they were cooler without the covers, so I removed them, and they're long gone, lost to time. I'm looking forward to getting into it.

On the walk down Solano Ave in Berkeley with Sam we visited Pegasus Books, a wonderful independent bookstore, and like usual, I found something to buy:

My only other copy was on my Kindle, but I could never really get into it, and now that my daughter buys books against my will on it, I've had to shelve it up real high. I've wanted the physical copy for a while, and not I'm getting deep into it, starting over from the beginning. It's SO good.

Cass joined Sam and I inside the bookstore and settled on the following Lego Yoda+book combo:

I thought, eh, whatever, when I agreed to get it for him. But goddamn if it isn't one of the cooler, most basic and yet deep collection of Star Wars information out there.

Okay, I'm sure there is plenty of Star Wars detritus floating in the ether. But this little Galaxy Atlas explains the orientations of the planets named in Episodes I through IX, Rogue One, Solo, and the Mandalorian, has inside jokes for most, and shows Lego examples of nearly every character throughout all 11 films and 2 seasons of the Mandalorian. It's shockingly thorough.

Sometimes you never know. But, as a rule: Always by something from independent bookstores.

Berkeley Hills for a Night

We made it out of the hot and smoky for the HOT valley and eventually to the chill Bay Area. Sam and Aurrie live in Berkeley with some friends (who's uncle's family owns the house). It was nice, and we all agreed that none of us could ever afford the place:

It was designed by an architect of some note that Corrie had heard of, but we can't remember now. It's also more or less falling apart, as no one is quite motivated to foot the bill to fix it up. But the view from the front door...are you kidding me:

That's San Francisco just across the bay visible whenever it's clear enough. 

They also live very close to two of the cool hiking rocks in the Berkeley Hills, Indian Rock and Contra Costa Rock. We wakied them both and hiked them both before leaving for San Jose.

I came out of the house early in AM to get something from our car and noticed someone crossing the street jogging. It looked like she appeared from nowhere and then kept going into a driveway. I walked down the street two houses away to see a paved footpath heading up to Indian Rock and down all the way to Solano Ave, the main drag on this side of Berkeley. It was amazing.

Footpath down to Solano Ave

We said farewell to our friends and went on down the road to San Jose to other friends, Donny and Anna, and had some barbecue beef ribs. As always, time with our people is so much fun and helps nourish us as we try to navigate new variants and the like.

Summer is Fire Season

Word came down that the small community of cabins known as Mill Creek has been given the evacuation order. The Fire, formerly known as the Dixie fire, is not exactly bearing down on the wooded collection of summer homes.

It is close enough, though, that due to the fact that there are exactly two exit roads with size constraints means NOW is the time to go, when the going's mellow. One direction down the Only Road (CA Rt 172) leads to CA 36. East on 36 goes to Chester, and has been closed for a bit. West on 36 heads back to Red Bluff, the valley, and I-5, but passes over Morgan Summit. The fire is at the base of Morgan mountain, and it the situation gets squirrely and erratic, it may force the closure of that pass, meaning 36 westbound from our Only Road will also be closed, making that direction down 172 untenable.

The other direction down 172 heads west to Mineral, and meets up 36 on the other side of Morgan Summit. This sounds better than the first scenario. The only problem is that this road is a constant back and forth of archetypical "mountain road" and is at best a lane and a half wide, with a few hundred foot drop on the downslope side to the eponymous Mill Creek. This view is calmly blocked by dense forest, so drivers never really realize it.

If the Morgan Summit pass gets closed, that leaves only the trek over the Mineral Summit, mentioned above, on a tiny lane while fire engines are oncoming traffic.

I mention all of this because this is where we are. This is the future, and that future is now. Back in 1990 we visited Yellowstone Park, and the ravages of the fire of 1988 were still very apparent. Not too much was charred and black and barren, and frankly much was green cover growth. But that was just it: green cover growth, grasses and mosses. Some stick like trees in the burned areas.

Thirty years later, in 2018, the town of Paradise was almost completely consumed by the Camp fire. A major calamity, for sure, but three years after that and the town of Greenwood has succumbed to the same fate. The Dixie fire still rages. Nearly 200 million Americans are at risk of extreme heat this weekend alone. This is what we'll be living with for, er, uh, ever? Forever? Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Anyway...

We had some great times, trying to get out of the cabin and explore in the few hours when the air quality wasn't dangerous.

That first Thursday we headed out in a lightly smoky morning and hiked through the forest for a bit like my brother and I used to do:

The glens were hazy, and we realized later that we probably shouldn't have been out.

Friday was the bad day, with the smoke keeping us inside most of the day. Just look at this sadly familiar eerie orange glow:

And the morning sky looked like sunset on Endor:

We headed back to Sacrament to see Norm and Holly and their kids, Dan and Lupita, my mom and Richard---all the peeps. It was very cool. We returned on Monday evening to the Cabin, and the next day was met with drizzle in the morning:

Later on we headed down to the creek, eh, Mill Creek (itself), and felt like having swim shoes and trunks would have been good:

My mom showed up and spent a few days with her and her fella, Richard. Some days were okay, some days were less so. We tried to make the most of it.

We never went to the Park, and by that I mean Lassen Volcanic National Park, and that was because it didn't make sense. It was just never nice enough air to do the hikes we're still trying for.

We did head to the general area where Ishi, possibly the last indigenous American undiscovered by white society, lived until he was, eh, discovered by white society in the early 1900s. It was surprisingly close. We drove for a minute to the basic entrance, and then followed the dirt road for what felt like a half an hour.

There were cool meadows:

And mini-ravines that barely look like anything here:

As we were finishing up, Corrie and Cass went off down a deer path. The plan was to follow the deer path down to the creek and then head up the creek back to where the main erstwhile logging road met it, while Camille and I would walk the logging road back to the rendezvous point.

After sitting with the toddler tied to my chest for a half an hour, I could hear voices off in the distance, and after some back and forth hollering, we were able to put eyes on each other. I ended up getting a picture of them coming in out of the cut, with a deer blind up in a tree:

Cuddling afterwards

Cass makes a friend

Eventually we left and headed for Berkeley, to stay with friends Sam and Aurrie and their roommates in a fancy Berkeley Hills house.

No trip to the Cabin ever feels like enough time, but this trip was stressful and full of anxiety.

And now we wait. And hope. Hope that the fire passes us by.

Maybe I should amend that statement: "Hope that this fire passes us by."

But there will be a next one. The future is now, and this is reality.
 

Summer is Fire Season: Intro

Our trip to the far northern reaches of the state of California has ended, with us arriving home around 1 am Saturday night/Sunday morning. I had been pushing for the long drive down US Hwy 101, starting the day in the Berkeley Hills, stopping by for an afternoon BBQ with old friends in San Jose, and making the trek back to the Southland.

Corrie had been thinking that saying somewhere close to SLO and then having a Sunday brunch with our SLO peeps sounded great. I agreed. But the idea of a $150+ motel room where my two kids were still going to sleep for shit, and then the midday drive on a Sunday back to the LA area on 101 (which is stop and go from Santa Barbara to the mountain up to Thousand Oaks, a distance of about 50 miles) convinced her of my crazy, let's-drive-the-entire-day-and-get-home-at-1-am plan.

In all my years of going to the Cabin, this year and last were the first two summers where wildfire was a serious topic of both conversation and concern. My mother's been visiting the same spot for over fifty years, and she's said the same thing.

So, whenever I can get over t this thing (my laptop), I plan on posting some stuff. Our trip was bizarre: circumstances pushed our initial departure date back nearly two weeks; we made the drive from Long Beach to Mill Creek in a single drive, which is unusual (especially with kids five and under); we left after two days to return to Sacramento for the weekend, and returned to the Cabin for nearly a week with my mom; after leaving for good, we went through the Bay Area (not unusual), but stayed in Berkeley, and then the long push home.

One day at the Cabin we were stuck inside because of smoke:

That picture was taken at 10:23 am. Too long outside and your eyes burned. This was from the Dixie fire as it raged through a relatively nearby mountain crevice, going from 60k acres when we arrived to 220 acres when we finally left for good ten days later. At least that particle mountain side wasn't populated.

New normals for everyone in the region, for certain.

Not everyday was this bad, as we got some wet weather as well. I'd like to get these posts up quick, what with my dad visiting this week and work getting started in earnest next week.

Also get to mention a few books I'll be attending to from this trip. Always makes me smile...