John Muir

I aspire to live like John Muir. He really knew what true freedom is. I've read most of his works and attempted to copy some of his adventures (like his first ascent of the Mountaineer's Route on Mt. Whitney and his ascent of Mt. Ritter minus the near-death part). And he was fallible--it is interesting to read some of his stuff on Central Valley irrigated agriculture; and his thoughts on preventing fire have turned out to be harmful in the long run. Following are some of my favorite John Muir quotes.

"I am losing the precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains and learn the news." --Muir, as quoted by Samuel Hall Young in Alaska Days with John Muir

"No two streams are alike. I fancy I could discriminate between Merced water and all others. Merced water is one thing, Tuolumne another, Kings River another, while town water, deadened and lost, is nothing--not water at all." --August, 1875

"The common purity of Nature is

Apothegms

Nuclear power is "so uneconomical that it is cheaper to write off a newly built nuclear plant than to run it." --Amory Lovins, 1992

A poignant quote in light of Japan's nuclear disaster--not that they needed a man-made disaster on top of two natural ones. Not that anyone needs a technology that is so potentially dangerous in the hands of humans, whether it be the hands of terrorists, governments, or power companies--requiring loss of freedom and excess militarization to lock it up as well as we can against any threat. Now insuring nuclear plants will get even more expensive, and our government will insist on continuing to subsidize it instead of spending the money on safe renewable energy like solar and wind that can come online in a fraction of the time as a nuclear power plant. So, to honor the painful irony of that quote, and celebrate the wondrous insights and inspiration contained in pithy aphorism, I'm reprinting here the apothegms page I used to have on Beyond the Batholith--Essays from the Eastern Sierra, and including new ones as I find them worthy of this page. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

apothegm, n. a short, pithy saying; aphorism aphorism, n. a terse saying embodying a general truth or astute observation

"Humanity now appropriates for its own use more than half of Earth's

My Great Great Grandmother - A Mystery

There are some really fascinating genealogy Websites - even the free ones give you some amazing resources. I was recently repeating a search for my oldest ancestors in L.A. to see if anything new popped up--I'd really like to find out where they came from.

Instead, I found something that raises a lot of new questions.

My great great grandmother was Dona Encarnacion Marteniz, who married Ignacio Bilderrain. In searching for her maiden name, I came across a biography of William Richard Rowland. It refers to his mother, a Dona Incarnacion Martinez Rowland.

Water Supply Solution: How California can thrive during the next mega-drought

The main constraints to having sustainable water systems (both human and natural) in California are not technological or economic, but political and social. There is a very simple (simple to lay out but hard to politically follow through) process we need to go through to achieve sustainability. And if the word "sustainability" rubs you or your audience the wrong way, then just replace it with "reliability" which means the same thing over the long term.

Right now we try to "use" every bit of water we can. In a variable climate like California's, and with a water rights system like ours, that is a recipe for disaster--we expand our "needs" in wet years and they must inevitably contract in dry years. This is not sustainable, or reliable, or any way to try to build anything stable. The Westlands (a low-priority water right) should never have been irrigated because

Renewable Energy Gold Rush

NIMBY and the Psychology of Protected Areas

December 2009

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
--Wendell Berry

2009 is the year of the renewable energy boom. Renewable energy projects that start construction by the end of 2010 can get 30% of the construction costs federally subsidized. Booms and busts have had great impacts on California and the West before, and those impacts will continue as we madly dash toward a carbon-free energy system.

The Eastern Sierra is already a renewable energy colony of the rest of the state and a water colony of Los Angeles too. We already produce, use, and export electricity generated from dammed streams, deadened geysers, and dropping water tables.

But it isn't enough. Now renewable energy prospectors are looking for sites where they can build new dams and hydroelectric plants. There is a proposal for

How to create a socially responsible oil company

Tonight (due to the documentary on marijuana on CNBC) I was thinking about how people that smoke pot without knowing where it comes from are probably supporting the Mexican Mafia and its horrible murderous acts. It reminded me of an essay I wrote on my Website in 2000, 2001, or 2002 when I didn't have a car. It was about boycotting all oil companies because they all did such horrible things. How could you be a willing customer of someone/something so evil?

At the time, the research I did on the Internet turned up zero oil companies with records clean enough that would make me want to do business with them.

The oil companies I researched back then were: BP and Oxy, Shell and Chevron, Texaco and Maxus, Unocal, Arco, Exxon, Mobil, and Amoco. Their crimes and transgressions included human rights violations (Colombia, Nigeria, Alaska, Ecuador, Burma, Thailand, Cameroon, Chad, Central America), spills and related environmental impacts, massive CO2 emissions, and being members of the Global Climate Coalition that claimed Global Warming was a myth.

I'm sure some things have changed, although the press surrounding the BP oil disaster this year leads me to believe that most oil companies are stuck in the old, outdated, and simply evil ways of doing business.

The logical next step: stop buying anything from them. But how to live without oil?

Welcome (back)

My previous Website was "Sustainable Use and Restoration of California's Natural Environment," found at www.ecomafia.com from about 1998 to 2008. Ecomafia was a novel I never had time to write. In 2008 I changed it to www.reisvalleyandmudville.com (a new book I wanted to write about my dad, who passed away that year). And in 2010 I canceled the site, and the new domain name, saving a few bucks, and keeping an eye out for a free place to host it. It was time for a change.

Well, ever since I discontinued my site I've been thinking about how to find an outlet for my essays. My ideas are too good (or at least thought provoking!) to keep to myself. Plus I had a few good essays on the old site that would be nice to put back up somewhere. The old site had five sections: Inspiration (quotes, lyrics, humor), The Realist Idealist (sustainable solutions), Glimpses of the Golden State (California geography and history), The Other Side of the Batholith (essays from the Eastern Sierra), and Resources and Links.

So here's the plan. I'll start off by posting the "best of" ecomafia.com and reisvalleyandmudville.com, revised, updated, and edited. I've changed since then, and so has the world. A lot of my resources and links are no longer relevant, surpassed by far better resources--and better compilations of them! When I started a Website about sustainability, it was easy to keep track of good resources, but the Internet has grown far too large for me to keep track of.

After I post "the best of," and maybe intermingled with it if I can't wait, I'll post my new essays and ideas... the ones that are worth sharing. And in the midst of all that, there is the book...

Bilderain Adobe in L.A., 1880s

I really really want to write this book already. But the research is daunting. And I don't have lots of time to do it. The general plan of the book is to write about my dad's fascinating life, but to include all his ancestors that I can find. Since my dad kept lots of journals, there is a lot of material to use, but the genealogical research is what is going to take the most time. And since I want to start writing at the beginning, and researching ancestors the farthest back takes the most time, I'm feeling like I'm not going to start writing for a few years. So this blog will be an outlet for that writing energy, and maybe you'll get some interesting updates on the book and the research once in a while. Like Encar. Bilderain, my great-great grandmother who lived here (see photo above right) in Los Angeles, but was born in 1824 in California (according to the 1880 census). The mystery is--where was she born? My dad's papers indicated that she and her husband were from Spain. But the censuses of 1870 and 1880 show California and Mexico as her birthplace. Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821, so if she was born 3 years earlier she could have been born in Spanish California. And what of her husband, Ignacio? By the time of the U.S. censuses, she was widowed, so those aren't too helpful for his information.

My cousin Brian did a family history of my mom's side of the family, and his effort is inspirational for my attempts to delve into my dad's side. What an interesting journey this will continue to be.