Blackout!
It was a frightfully hot day, with only a slight breeze and a houseful
of guests from England, Hawai’i and Nevada. You see, this past weekend my dearest
husband and my wonderful office manager had planned a several day extravaganza
celebration of my birthday. It was a significant one, a decade somewhere
between 30 and 100. Friends and relatives started miraculously appearing
everywhere I went- out for dinner (at a table for two) my family from
What a wonderful celebration with my nearest and dearest beside me,
until the sublime went to awful. It was naturally the time that the toilet in
one of the guestrooms would overflow requiring people to go outside the guest
wing and go into the main house to use the facilities which, of course, got the
dogs barking at all hours of the night. The ultimate disaster occurred when, as
I emerged from my shower, hot and dripping, that I realized there was no
electricity. I had 30 minutes to get ready to go somewhere, I didn’t know where
or for what. I got dressed and did the best I could to look presentable in the
half-dark. My husband tried, unsuccessfully, to get hold of our electrician to
fix the problem, whatever it was. We left in a limo for an unknown destination.
When we returned later that evening to a dark house, it was clear that
we were not going to have either lights or air-conditioning or even fans that
evening. Fortunately, we had survived a week of no power or phones during El
Nino so we were prepared with many flashlights and lanterns. We were also
fortunate in that we had just, earlier that day, charged up some solar lanterns
designed to light the way in the garden that we instead used to guide people
around the house. They worked wonderfully.
The next morning, which was my actual birthday, we had another event to
attend and we left the house, still no electricity, with the temperature,
inside and out, climbing. During brunch, it was announced that it was between
107 to 109 degrees where we were. Dick Monoit, showed up and discovered that
the source of the problem was not within the house but an outside 80-year-old
transformer, but it did not affect our ranch office
as the cat over there was quite comfortable. Our house guests tromped over to
the office for hot showers as our hot water had become cold overnight. It was
quite a sight seeing people coming up the road with towels and soap in their
hands. I think it really frightened the turkeys that hang out around here!
To the rescue came the guys from PG&E to save the day! They
promptly came out, determined what the problem was, got the correct crew
assembled, and went to work replacing the ancient transformer, which had picked
my birthday to sigh its last breath. At 5 p.m. the lights came back on and, in
fairly quick succession, all of the other comfort items requiring electricity
returned to normal and we concluded the day with a soak in the pool (now that
we could open the powered cover!) with more cups of Pimm’s to salute the great
guys from PG&E, who were willing, on a hot Sunday in September, to come out
and help out a very grateful customer. I can only hope that I am as successful
in scheduling an appointment to replace the even older transformer at the
office before it blows and causes such a disruption!
Oh yes, and did I mention that when the toilets decided to malfunction,
the three, count ‘em three, plungers we had simply vanished? We could not find
a single one between the house and the office! And to top it all off as a
weekend to remember, the coffee pot blew up on Monday! Can you believe it? Why
does this kind of stuff NEVER happen when it’s just the immediate family? Can
you tell me? I must say that all of our wonderful houseguests were very
accommodating of all the adventures.
The
Hummingbird Wars
Do you have a hummingbird feeder outside one of your windows? Then you
know what I am talking about. We are delighted with the antics of these
colorful little birds as they swoop around each other aiming for one of the
feeders. If you spend some time observing a series of feeders, you will notice
that there is some very peculiar behavior that occurs quite regularly. We call
it the hummingbird wars and it is quite amusing to watch.
I can never understand how they know you just filled the feeders up.
Pretty soon, more hummers arrive and as the numbers increase, there soon
arrives what we call “the alpha hummer,” my husband used to call him Saddam.
This bird, for some unknown reason, begins to demonstrate obnoxious behavior.
He or she runs the other birds away from the feeders by dive-bombing them. You
don’t want to sit too close to this maneuver because you could become part of
the assault. As this bird ducks and dives around the others, the rest move back
and forth from the feeders, trying to catch a quick sip before being driven off
again. This goes on for quite a while until most of the “undesirable” birds are
driven away. The aggressor then sits alone at the feeder and drinks to his
heart’s content until he’s ready to fly away. The solution to this bad behavior
is to set up more feeders. As he chased birds away from one feeder, others
moved in on the remaining feeders. Eventually, the dismissed hummers return and
everything is peaceful until the “alpha hummer” comes back and the scenario
repeats itself. It’s nature’s way of entertaining you. We really enjoy it.
Brown-outs
I heard today that Los Angeles is having trouble providing enough
electricity for its residents again because of the high heat this week. I can’t
begin to understand why government officials have been so cowed by the
so-called “environmental community” that
It seems to me that politicians these days no longer have the
capability to make decisions of any kind because they are so beholden to the
contributors of their re-elections that they have forgotten the reason they
have been voted into office in the first place. They have become so removed
from their real constituents that they don’t realize that the people who voted
them in can easily replace them. I’m not too sure that even the voters realize
that the power of the ballot box is in their hands, not somebody else’s.
So what can we do to change this situation? How do we get politicians
to be responsive to our needs and not those of their special interest groups?
Is it even possible to change this treadmill we seem to be on, constantly
changing one unresponsive agenda-driven politico for another? I have to believe
that it is possible but it will take some strong-willed people to push, and I
mean push hard, to change the direction we are headed in.
There are too many issues facing us in the Valley such as the Community
Plan, the Santa Ynez Airport expansion, and the Uniform Rules just to mention a
few that are going to be decided in the coming months that could forever change
the look of our Valley if we are not careful. There are forces here that do not
care about agriculture and only see those fields as places to develop. There
are those among us who if they could, would freeze time, making it impossible
for us to thrive and grow but rather force us to be stagnant until we shrivel
and die. There are powerful people who see this Valley as a tourist magnet,
where they can make phony ranch visits a thing to do, flight seeing and wagon
rides, where they can exploit the real nature of the Valley and its beauty for
their economic advantage.
We all need to be vigilant in the coming months to identify those who
would change us to their liking, who would put inappropriate designations on
agricultural land in the hope that they could someday develop it into some
money-making venture for themselves. Together we can keep our Valley the way we
would like it but it won’t be easy. These schemers will do almost anything to
fool us into thinking they are doing what is best for us, but we know better
what we want. It will be an uphill battle but we will prevail. Keep in touch so
we can work together to identify those who would jeopardize our future.