Bob's Trees

About six years ago, I wrote a blog post called "Bob's Trees," after one day, my neighbor Bob told me about the trees near his house. He had lived in that house for a long time, and passed away on November 8th, 2015, after living close to 100 years.

Unfortunately, as I tried to upload a photo of a ginko leaf, the browser crashed and the entire blog post was lost.

Since then, I had always hoped that I'd remember any of the stories enough to write them down, but now six years later, I'm pretty sure I won't.

But the trees are so amazing, especially in autumn, and I want to tell their story. The story of the ginko, in front of the house that Bob said used to have a truck regularly parked on the front lawn/steps. The story of the Japanese maples. The story of the birch. But I don't remember.

What I do remember slightly are his stories of working at a bank, and of San Quentin (where his dad may have worked?). I remember they were often humorous, at times offensive or inappropriate, but interesting stories that only a 96-year old can get away with telling. Even those stories are now lost--surprising details I was sure I'd remember are now faded--something about the trunk of a car and San Quentin. Because I stopped to listen, and he took the time to share, I felt almost a responsibility to share the remarkable stories.

So I saved this draft blog post with a few notes, and every time I scroll down far enough to see it, I think I'll finally write something about Bob's Trees. Well, this is it.

A note I made here about a dumpster--I don't remember the story I wanted to tell when I wrote the abrupt note six years ago, but after Bob died, his house was so full of unwanted stuff that a dumpster sat out front for a while, and free books sat on shelves in front of his house until the winter rains finally ended the drought and soaked the books. There was probably something really interesting or funny about the dumpster, but then I had a child and four years of new daddy brain plus two years of pandemic brain. I've been unearthing pre-pandemic layers in piles of paper, and it is striking how unfiled papers mimic geologic strata--and how quickly two years can go by, and be buried by more current matters. Like unraked ginko leaves in autumn covering organic material from last year's leaves.

100 Years Ago This Weekend

100 years ago this weekend my dad was born. The end of World War I and the end of the pandemic were recent memories, and the Roaring Twenties were just getting started.

He was an only child, living with his mother and father in Torrance. His father, Charles G. Reis, born 140 years ago in St. Paul, Minnesota, moved to L.A. in 1894, and worked for the Pacific Electric Railway (PE) as a carpenter... until, the story goes, due to anti-German sentiment (racism and nationalism), he was beaten and spent the rest of his life in the hospital. 

There was a long history of racism affecting his family--his great-uncle Refugio Bilderrain resigned from the L.A. Board of Police Commissioners in 1889 in protest of firing Latino officers; another other great-uncle Jesus Bilderrain was shot during the Chinese Massacre of 1871.

The violent incident that took his father from him occurred around 1924 when my dad was 3 years old. He and his mom, Ida C. Reis, moved in with his grandmother and aunts and uncles in L.A. He was taken care of by his Spanish grandmother, Domitila Bilderrain de Starr, while his mother worked as a secretary for the P.E. 1924-43. They got free passes on the railway and my dad spent his childhood riding electric trains around the greater L.A. area. Here is a 1926 map of the PE railway system, when my dad was 5 years old.

The last 100 years was an interesting century, and my dad had some interesting times. He was 8 years old when the 1929 stock market crash triggered the Great Depression. This period instilled an attitude of fixing everything and not wasting anything.

In 1941 the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into World War II. He worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica during the war, and then was drafted into the Army just as the war ended, spending most of his time in the Army at Fort Lewis, WA.

After leaving the Army, he got an A.A. degree in Electrical Engineering. About a year after his mother died, he had a nervous breakdown and was in a mental hospital 1952-1958. While there, he had electric shock treatments that erased his memory. He came out of the hospital, and rediscovered his life, his friends and cousins, and began piecing together his lost memories. He moved back to Torrance, and in the late 1960s met his soulmate, my mom. They married, and had my sister and me. 

He had his last ride on the Red Cars in 1961. He built a wooden railroad train car capable of carrying a couple of kids at a time that ran on tracks made from galvanized pipe along the side of our house, called Reis Valley and Mudville, that was the highlight of our birthday parties. He built a play house, a treehouse, and repaired almost everything himself. He had a ready laugh and a great sense of humor. He was always interested in science, outer space, and followed the Apollo moon landings closely.

He was an electric motor repairman who worked for M&W Electric for 27 years, and was recognized by his colleagues as someone they could rely on, capable of solving technically difficult problems. He was an inventor, and applied for a patent. He was a devout Catholic and interested in theology and the history of the church. He loved to go hiking in the mountains. He loved to ride trains, and explored the old PE rights-of-way and wrote letters to the Metropolitan Transporation Authority advising them to build new light rail lines in the same places where the PE once ran. He was often reserved, but once you got him talking about trains or electricity you couldn't get him to stop.

He was laid off in 1986 when the City of Torrance condemned his employer's land to make way for the expansive front lawn and parking lot of the future American Honda headquarters. He then worked for the City of Torrance for over 20 years as a Senior Aide cleaning up the garages where buses and police cars are repaired. He rode his bike to work every day until he was 84 years old, when a head injury forced him to retire. He died in 2008 after being run over by a car driven by an unlicensed driver with Alzheimer's Disease.

He lived an incredibly full and eventful life, filled with love and joy and family and friends.

Happy 100th Birthday, Dad.

So why doesn't California just divert water from the Great Lakes?

Several years ago, The Economist magazine held an essay-writing contest where you were supposed to answer the question: "Do we need nature?" The question was abhorrent and offensive, much like the question in the title of this post is to me.

But many people are so disconnected from nature, and ignorant of where their water comes from and the impacts of those water-gathering activities, that these horrifying questions might not sound unreasonable. In fact, the Great Lakes question, or some other silver-bullet sound-bite water solution like ocean desalination, always seems to come up in casual conversations about California's water problems. An overwhelming problem must require a big overwhelming solution. The ironic thing is, the very thing causing the problems--too much water demand, satisfied by imported water from far away, with destructive impacts on ecosystems in both the supply areas and the delivery areas--is the very solution that people want to try in order to solve the same problems. Another helping of expensive destruction, please. Bigger, more expensive dams, bigger canals, usually paid for by the taxpayer and often benefiting a few wealthy agribusiness interests, while ignoring the cause of the problem, with mitigation after mitigation enabling the problem to get supersized beyond the point of reversing course. Not to mention the farmers in the wetter areas of the country who could grow the same crops sustainably, but can't compete with California's water-subsidized unsustainable agriculture (that their tax dollars helped fund, until the ecological and groundwater disaster eventually puts a stop to it).

Graphic Novel Reviews

Our family has been reading a lot of graphic novels over the last year or two. They are mostly fun, some are absolutely brilliant, and some I don't care for that much. As we keep reading I'll add reviews to this page, from the adult point of view (my kids might absolutely love the ones I don't like that much). Watch out, there are lots of spoilers here.

The Bad Guys
This is a really fun and clever story of bad-guys-turned-good, fighting aliens. Can bad guys really become good? But really great silliness and good character development and a well-thought-out plot.

Captain Underpants
Silly, clever, inappropriate. A bad influence but good.

The Catstronauts
The Catstronauts are a cat space program that heroically accomplish important missions despite themselves. Aside from overly-simplistic plot devices (solar panels on the moon will save the Earth), and the risk that readers might actually believe the solutions are good policy ideas (they are very bad ideas), the stories and characters are well-developed and contain entertaining parallels to reality (such as a Cosmocats space program).

Catwad
Catwad and Blurmp are cats that have a crass and at times disgusting sibling rivalry. Blurmp is simple and gullible, while Catwad is manipulative and mean. You explore their toxic relationship through clever stories set in ordinary situations with hilarious outcomes. And Catwad might actually learn something once in a while from sweet Blurmp, who bumbles along cluelessly and never stoops to Catwad’s meanness.

Dog Man
The body of a cop and head of a dog are sewn together to create—Dog Man! Not my favorite, but endearing characters fighting bad guys with plenty of goofiness.

El Deafo
A deaf girl imagines herself as a superhero and discovers advantages she has that other kids don’t. Poignantly captures the feeling of being different, of worrying the other kids will judge you. A powerful story.

Glorkian Warrior
The Glorkian Warrior and his Super Backpack encounter silly alien creatures while on patrol. Lots of cleverness. I think the video game is better than the books.

Hilo
Hilo is a robot-boy who with other kids saves the world from giant robots sent to destroy it. A complex plot with twists and turns. I love the relationships between the characters. I love the real family interactions and the individual personalities of the kids’ family members. And clever laugh-out-loud silliness is on almost every page.

Johnny Boo
Johnny Boo is a ghost who hangs out with other ghosts and tangles with an ice cream monster. Not my favorite.

Princess in Black
Keeping monsters from eating goats and keeping their superhero identities secret occupy these princesses, goat herders, and others.

Totoro
This beautifully-illustrated magical fantasy is set in Japan. The movie is even more amazingly wonderful--the best animated/kids film I've ever seen.

Bright Light at Night is a Fright

 "Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!" --Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862

Last month, my brother and sister in law described UFO lights they saw in the early morning sky. Then one evening we met a guy that was out looking for the Starlink satellites--his description made it sound like this is what my in-laws saw. We Googled it, and yes, it was.

Satellite watching has always been a fun part of the stargazing experience. Getting a glimpse of one used to seem rare and special. When bright ones like the ISS could be seen, it was--and still is--an event to watch for.

But now, this is becoming excessive, and satellites are becoming part of the light pollution that plagues our night sky. SpaceX is intending to put 42,000 satellites in orbit--this article, which is more concerned with impacts to astronomy than stargazing, states that as of 2019, there were only 2,200 operational satellites orbiting Earth. So if you think you see them often now, just wait.