San Diego Historical Landmarks: #17—Lighthouse of 1854

The Lighthouse of 1854, San Diego Historical Landmark #17, also is known as the Cabrillo Lighthouse and is located on the grounds of Cabrillo National Monument.

Just 19 days after California was admitted as the 31st state of the United States, Congress authorized $90,000 to build six lighthouses along the California coast. By the time they got around to building the Cabrillo lighthouse, there was no money left so congress had to authorize another $59,434. Construction began in April 1854, was completed in October 1855, and was lighted for the first time at sunset on November 15, 1855. Officially it was light number 355 in the Twelfth United States Lighthouse District.

The lighthouse was decommissioned on March 23, 1891, being replaced by a new lighthouse at a lower elevation. During its time in use, it was at the highest elevation of any lighthouse in the United States. However, what originally was considered good turned out to be bad, bad, bad. Being at the top of a 400-ft cliff meant that fog and low clouds blocked the light from ships.

The light was re-lit in 1984 for the first time in 93 years for the site’s 130th birthday.

The lighthouse tower normally is closed off to the public. However, there are two days a year when it is open: August 25, which is the National Park Service’s birthday, and November 15, which is the Lighthouse’s birthday. I can highly recommend trekking to the top of the tower; it’s pretty cool.

For the introductory blog post to San Diego’s historical landmarks, click on San Diego’s Historical Landmarks.

For previous posts in the San Diego Historical Landmarks series, go here.

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Let’s swing, baby, let’s swing!

Since Hillary Clinton is currently winning the popular vote by 2,833,224, people are calling for the abolishment of the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular vote. Many are saying that if we went to a direct popular vote there would be no swing states. I think that not only would we still have swing states, but we’d have swing cities, too. So I set out to prove that to myself. Quite interesting.

The main purpose of the Electoral College was, and still is in my opinion, to prevent the most populous states and cities from electing the president every four years. If one chose to ignore the least populous states, then could band together and do you in, something they could not do if it was a direct popular vote. Clinton did not go to Wisconsin at all, and didn’t set foot in Michigan until four days before the election. Two reliably blue states suddenly weren’t so reliably blue anymore; in fact, they turned a light shade of red.

What might have happened in 2016 if we had a direct popular vote? Let’s make some educated guesses.

The total population of the United States is 321,418,820 according to the Census Bureau 2015 estimate.

So far, 136,499,945 votes have been cast for presidential candidates in the 2016 election. So 42.46% of the population voted.

Of those votes, 65,788,567 have been for Clinton and 62,955,343 for Trump.

Let’s see what we would have to do to get to 65,788,567 if we had a direct popular vote.

Here are the Top 25 states by those 2015 population estimates:

California – 39,144,818
Texas – 27,469,114
Florida – 20,271,272
New York – 19,795,791
Illinois – 12,859,995
Pennsylvania – 12,802,503
Ohio – 11,613,423
North Carolina – 10,042,802
Georgia – 10,214,860
Michigan – 9,922,576
New Jersey – 8,958,013
Virginia – 8,382,993
Arizona – 6,828,065
Massachusetts – 6,794,422
Indiana – 6,619,680
Tennessee – 6,600,299
Missouri – 6,083,672
Maryland – 6,006,401
Wisconsin – 5,771,337
Minnesota – 5,489,594
Colorado – 5,456,574
South Carolina – 4,896,146
Alabama – 4,858,979
Louisiana – 4,649,676
Kentucky – 4,425,092

The Top 10 states have 174,137,154 people, 54.18% of the population
The Top 20 states have 241,671,630 people, 75.19% of the population.
The Top 25 states have 265,958,097 people, 82.75% of the population.

That should tell us enough right there that there are going to be swing states with a direct popular vote.

I am going to take some liberties with numbers here because this is not a dissertation. I’m not going to go county by county in each state or city by city. To tedious, and I’m not getting paid for this research. So I’m going to use the numbers I cited above about population, votes, and percentage of the population that votes.

How can we get to 65,788,567 the easiest way?

Presuming that 42.46% of the population votes everywhere, here are the total number of votes in the Top 10, 20, and 25 states:

Top 10 states – 73,938,635
Top 20 states – 102,613,774
Top 25 states – 112,925,808

Quite a few votes there.

So far Clinton has taken 48.1967% of the votes. Trump has 46.1211% and other candidates have the remainder.

Here is what happens if Clinton takes 48.1967% of the Top 10, 20, and 25 states:

Top 10 – 35,635,982
Top 20 – 49,456,452
Top 25 – 54,426,512

With just 25 states, Clinton is 82.72% of the way to her 2016 popular vote total. Bring in those swing states!

Let’s look at cities. I’m going to use the Combined Statistical Area because my whole point here is that candidates want to spend their money wisely, which is why Clinton didn’t go to Wisconsin. It was safely Democratic. Not so wise, in retrospect. Here are the Top 20 Combined Statistical Areas:

New York-Newark – 23,723,696
Los Angeles-Long Beach – 18,679,763
Chicago-Naperville – 9,923,358
Washington-Baltimore-Arlington – 9,625,360
San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland – 8,713,914
Boston-Worcester-Providence – 8,152,573
Dallas-Fort Worth – 7,504,362
Philadelphia-Reading-Camden – 7,183,479
Houston-The Woodlands – 6,855,069
Miami-Fort Lauderdal-Port St Lucie – 6,654,565
Atlanta-Athens-Clarke-Sandy Springs – 6,365,108
Seattle-Tacoma – 4,602,591
Minneapolis-St. Paul – 3,866,768
Cleveland-Akron-Canton – 3,493,596
Denver-Aurora – 3,418,876
Orlando-Deltona-Dayton Beach – 3,129,308
Portland-Vancouver-Salem – 3,110,906
St. Louis-St. Charles-Farmington – 2,916,447
Pittsburgh-New Castle-Weirton – 2,648,605

Total population of the Top 20 CSA’s: 145,888,257

Using our 42.46 voting number again, there are 61,944,153 votes there, and Clinton would have received 29,855,038 of them. Almost half way there with just 20 areas. And look where those 20 areas are: 6 in the Midwest, 5 on the East Coast, 5 in the South, and 4 on the West Coast. Heck, we might have SWA’s, Swing Geographic Areas!

One could just campaign east of the Mississippi River and hit 16 of those CSA’s!

But I would submit that Republicans would never have a chance if we had a direct popular vote because cities are reliably Democratic. Don’t believe me? Go check the cities in the reddest of the red states, like Utah, Alabama, and Georgia. Every other state is just like that. It’s the suburbs and rural areas that decide the elections. Ooops. Back to swing areas, aren’t we? Rural areas are reliably Republican. Go look at Utah, Alabama, and Georgia again. So really we’re to the suburbs as the swing areas.

Now if money and time are important when out on the campaign trail, does anyone really believe that candidates are going to go anywhere other than to the big metropolitan areas with their many suburbs? We would have lots of swing cities.

I’m a reliably blue guy in a reliably red city in a reliably blue state, except that my city this election turned blue. Not only that, but Orange County, a suburb of Los Angeles, has been reliably red since 1932. Ooopsy. It turned blue this election.

The more people have to live in close proximity to people who are different, the more those people are tolerant of differences, even accepting of them. So I should be all for a direct popular vote. I’m not. I will put aside my self interest for the good of the nation. Without the Electoral College, a super majority of those red states would always feel neglected. No candidate would visit them and even if they banded together, they would never have a say. The cities would be too powerful. I do believe that eventually there would be another war between the states.

So instead of going to a direct popular vote, I think we should return to the practices of my generation where each family had four children minimum and up to nineteen, the highest I personally know of—I come from a Mormon (mom) and Catholic (dad) family. The more people we have, the more progressive we become!

Alternately, we could do like Maine and Nebraska do. Each state gets a minimum of three electoral votes, two for its two senators and one for its congressional district. In the case of Maine and Nebraska, the two senatorial electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote in the states, and the congressional district electoral votes go to the winner of the popular vote in each congressional district. That allows both urban and rural areas to have a say in each state. If we did that here in California, the state would be about evenly split because of our large rural areas.

Out & About—Free Zoo passes and your own personal docent

San Diego is a destination for Christmas for those who want to get away from the snow. However, we do have snow in San Diego county, but you have to travel about 60 miles from the airport to play in it.

If you are traveling to San Diego by plane, sit on the left side. Best views of downtown as you’re landing.

If you are coming by train from Los Angeles, sit on the right side. Best views of the beaches, piers, and ocean.

Once you get to San Diego, if you are looking for things to do, I can highly recommend the San Diego Zoo and the Wild Animal Park. The Zoo is just a couple of miles from the airport and the train station while the Wild Animal Park is about 45 miles northeast.

I have an annual Keeper’s Club membership to the Zoological Society so I get four free passes each year. The four passes on my desk right now expire June 30, 2017. I normally give them away on Christmas Day when Jim and I go to the Zoo or Wild Animal Park, a Christmas tradition for us.

If you are coming to San Diego and would like a free pass, let me know. And if you want your own personal docent for the day, for Zoo, Wild Animal Park, or general tourist stuff, I have been known to do that, too. Give me 12 hours notice and I’m yours.

Out & About San Diego—Rumbi and Rangui the Glarfs

Earlier this year I delivered packages for Amazon and people for Uber. Those two jobs were the worst I ever had, and those two companies are the worst I have ever been affiliated with. I’ll just leave it there….

One of my goals for driving, though, was to explore the nooks and crannies of San Diego County that I ordinarily wouldn’t explore.

On one of my deliveries I found two Glarfs (Glarves? Scarf, scarves; Glarf, Glarves?????). Their names are Rumbi and Rangui, and they’re kind of cute:

Rangui the Glarf is the one in yellow, and Rumbi the Glarf is in blue. Rangui and Rumbi were born in 1959. Daddy was Jerry Lee Gauss of Bonita, California, which is where these two Glarfs still live. Daddy was only 15 years old when he had these two little ones. Sadly, Jerry died at the age of 19 in a traffic accident. “Glarf” was Jerry’s word for dwarf dinosaur.

Rangui and Rumbi guarded the Gauss home on Valley Road in Bonita in the 1960s. Rangui and Rumbi ran away from home in 1970. No one knew where they were. They were located in 1993, and they were given a permanent home in 1999 on Bonita Road, south side at about 4140.

Sunrise, sunset

We have been having beautiful sunrises and sunsets since mid-October.

My home office faces east, and, like my wise old grandmother, I get up before the sun does. Thus I see the sunrise every day. Following is the sunrise of December 2:

I wasn’t prepared for that sunrise so I had to take the picture through my home office window (only slightly dirtier than the windows in a coal mine) and through the screen. So all the smudging will forever prevent me from using that picture for anything other than a snapshot for a blog post.

Here’s another from October 24 through my home office window:

The most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen might be that of December 5:

I was prepared for it, so the window was open and the screen had been removed.

The only sunrise that might compete with it is the sunrise on September 17, 2012, that I watched from the top of Mount Helix, also here in La Mesa (Mount Helix is a mountain 900 feet tall—if they are taller than us, we call them mountains here in San Diego):

I have billions of sunset pictures because I have to make myself all beautiful and go out into the world in order to get sunset pictures since there is a mountain behind me blocking my view to the west. My favorite sunset pictures usually involve water or boats, like panorama of San Diego harbor on November 7, 2016:

My favorite sunrise and sunset pictures usually have a lot of colors in them, like these three:

Top picture: Sunset at Imperial Beach, California, on November 5, 2011
Middle picture: Sunset at La Jolla Cove in La Jolla, California, on , October 17, 2012
Bottom picture: Sunset at La Jolla Cove in La Jolla, California, on , October 17, 2012

La Jolla’s sunset on October 17, 2012, was pretty spectacular throughout the course of about two hours, and if you’re ever in San Diego, go visit La Jolla. Such beauty throughout the is to be experienced, photographed, and shared.

We all know that the sun sets in the west but occasionally here in La Mesa, California, it can look like it sets in the east. Here is the sunset from last night, December 10, but looking east instead of west:

I was not prepared for that sunset so, again, a grainy smudgy picture unsuitable for anything other than a snapshot of a sunset.

And lastly, here is what a certain queen in the house thinks about all my sunrise and sunset excitement:

Be a unique star

My wise old grandmother always said, “If you don’t get up early, you won’t see the sun rise.” She was always up before sunrise. I wasn’t far behind her. Here is this morning’s sunrise through the dirty window of my home office in La Mesa CA:

With that out of the way….

A few more quips from my wise old grandmother:

“If you’re not sleeping with someone, you don’t know what they are thinking.”

“Ten percent of the people will love you because that’s the kind of people they are. Ten percent of the people will hate you because that’s the kind of people they are. Eighty percent of the people will love you or hate you based on your actions and words. So be nice.”

“Children aren’t born with hatred in their hearts. Mom and dad teach them that, usually through religion.”

I believe she was right on all counts.

I have been a member of a home inspector trade association for 13 years. There are about 10,000 members. I led a marketing seminar at its national convention in 2007, which is when a very significant member of the association found out I was gay. He wasn’t happy, telling me that he always thought gays should be killed. I brushed it off , thinking that if he got to know a gay person, he would change his mind. Apparently that has not worked.

I have had significant interaction with that person over the past nine years. A couple of days ago I was on the association’s message board and all sorts of Trump-approved hate was spewing. It’s allowed on the message board under the guise of free speech. He was participating and left a comment stating that maybe now that Trump was president, gays, illegal immigrants, and blacks would be killed. “Can’t go wrong with that.”

That definitely caused me to rethink my association, and I have decided to move on. However, that also means that my latest venture, House Key News, is being put on the back burner because I believe my main target audience all are Trump supporters. I’m not going to intentionally associate with those kind of people, especially now that they apparently have approve to spew their hatred in public.

My fallback is Photographic Art by Russel Ray Photos. I have let it slip over the past year, but a recent sale a few days ago has encouraged me to make it numero uno.

House Key News had a main target audience of about 20,000 people—home inspectors. Photographic Art has a main target audience of about 3,000,000 people—Realtors, loan agents, title agents, and escrow agents. They can use Photographic Art as unique close-of-escrow gifts instead of the standard $50 gas or restaurant card, a plant, a bottle of wine or champagne, etc.

Photographic Art also can be used for birth gifts, birthday gifts, graduation gifts, marriage gifts, divorce gifts, new business gifts, anniversary gifts, just because gifts, etc. The possibilities are endless.

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