Protest, destruction, beautification

I went to a Vietnam War protest during my senior year in high school in Kingsville, Texas. That was 1973. That was the last one I went to because there were several injuries and an out-of-control crowd. I’m all for peaceful protest, but when the peaceful protests last for several years, perhaps even decades, and no one listens, perhaps it’s time for something other than peaceful protests.

I remember studying how the South protested when they lost the privilege to own black people.

Then, of course, there was the Boston Tea Party which happened because the King of England would not listen to the people’s concerns.

The city of La Mesa, California, where Jim and I lived for eight years, had a riot on Saturday, May 30. It started very peacefully, but when the marchers wanted to enter the on-ramp to Interstate 8, the police turned them back towards downtown. That’s when the rioting started.

I had heard about the riots but did not see any pictures, notwithstanding so many posts saying that the press was glorifying the violence.

Yesterday I read about many arts associations traveling to downtown La Mesa to paint positive messages on the plywood and particle board covering both broken and unbroken windows. I immediately ventured to La Mesa to see for myself. The destruction was like nothing I had ever seen, but I’ll take this destruction over that of the Philadelphia Eagles fans any day of the week. And when the powers that be refuse to listen to the concerns of their communities, seen as way too willing to reign in police brutality, well, something’s going to happen. It’s gone on for too long. There also are way too many reports of police brutality continuing during the protests….

One man lost an eye after being shot in the face by a “rubber bullet,” which are not bullets by any stretch of the imagination. They are huge projectiles.

A 75-year-old many was pushed to the ground by two police officers and left there to bleed. A grandmother died after being shot with rubber bullets. Lots of videos of police beating protesters peaceably assembled.

Due to my age and underlying health conditions, I’m in no physical or mental condition to even go out whenever I want during this pandemic. Add in protests, and it’s perilous for me. I did get some ugly stares yesterday from some in downtown La Mesa, and every time I got one of those ugly stares, I gave the artists a monetary donation to help pay for the supplies they were using to make the plywood less ugly.

La Mesa has always been a peaceful city, even during their acclaimed Oktoberfest, so I was quite shocked at the destruction. However, I also found out that although the death of George Floyd prompted protests nationwide, an incident of police brutality in La Mesa—captured on video by a bystander, of course—is what led to this protest starting at the City Hall/Police Station complex. A black person was caught smoking a cigarette at the San Diego Trolley station in La Mesa. Smoking is not allowed, yet even my Excel spreadsheet doesn’t have enough cells to tell you the number of times I have seen white people smoking at the Trolley stations and on the Trolley. The police had been seeking to press charges against the person who captured the brutality on video, but they announced yesterday that they would not do so. I think that’s a good thing.

I also got a chance yesterday to use the camera on my new Samsung S20 Ultra 5G phone. So here are all the pictures I took yesterday, with no comment other than the picture of Randall Lamp, which was a historic building; the other pictures of burned out buildings are of Chase Bank and Union Bank.

We moved to the boondocks!

So our live-in-the-sky experiment came to an end yesterday. It lasted 2 years and 3 months. For the first few months it was kind of neat to live high up but then the 45 stairs to get to the front door became burdensome. Sunrises from the home office were spectacular.

Sadly, though, there was no wildlife 50 feet up in the sky—no lizards, no snakes, no spiders, no bugs, no birds. Well, alright, one mourning dove did come to visit us in the 27 months we lived there.

Our new home is in the boondocks, which is kind of funny since the city of La Mesa had 60,00o people crammed into 9.1 square miles. Out here in the boondocks, we live in El Cajon (ka-hone), a city of 104,000 crammed into 14.48 square miles. So the population density actually is greater in El Cajon, 7,163 people per square mile, versus La Mesa’s 6,592.

Maybe it’s the outskirts, where we lived and live, that is the difference. A-ha! (not the group). Google Maps indicates that we don’t even live in El Cajon. That’s simply the post office that delivers our mail. Google Maps indicates that we live in Winter Gardens, which is a census-designated place in San Diego County. In other words, an unincorporated area. In other words, THE BOONDOCKS!

We’re at the end of a street, not a true cul-de-sac, but we only have one neighbor. The other three sides are hills. At night it is quiet quiet quiet. We kind of like it since the street we lived on in La Mesa was noisy noisy noisy, even with dual-pane windows. We also have a nice oversized 2-car garage. We haven’t had a nice garage since March 2007.

I don’t know who loves it best out here, me or Zoey the Cool Cat (ZCC). The old place was 684 square feet (we downsized too much) and the new place is 1,440 square feet. Our largest home was 3,984 square feet on 1.83 acres of land, too big for just two people. This new place feels just right for the queen and her staff of two.

ZCC has 14 low-sill windows where she can watch all the wildlife, and after 11 days here (hmmm, same number of days that Scaramucci was employed by Twitler………), she knows where the sunny spots are, the sunny windows, and, of course, the wildlife. There’s a difference between dawn, day, and dusk wildlife, so she has to go to different windows. There are a few billion rabbits, another billion ground squirrels, only a million fence lizards, and then birds of all types, with ravens and raptors prevailing. Sometimes the ground squirrels come to see ZCC.

Following are some pictures of the wildlife and, of course, the queen adjusting to her new palace. It’s all about the queen….

Common garden wolf spider found its way inside.
It was returned to the outside where it could become food for….

….California quail, the state bird.

I built a cat box for ZCC whereby she can go through a cat door
in the window and sit outside while still being protected.
This ground squirrel came up to see ZCC in her cat box,
which is the blurred white in the lower right.
They are just a couple of feet from each other.
ZCC helping me put together our new desks,
although she’s more interested in the tennis match
on our new 49″ 4K TV than she is actually helping me.

ZCC exploring the new digs.

ZCC helping me populate the bookshelves.

Like any cat, ZCC likes to help unpack things.

Once all the work is done, of course, one has to sleep,
and ZCC has lots of options for that vital task.

Lake Murray under threatening skies

Now that I have a fine fine fine super computer for all my digital photo editing needs, I’m testing it out like there’s no tomorrow.

One of the software programs that I have always wanted—but didn’t want to pay $99 for because the full-featured trial program never would operate on my old computer—is Photomatix. Photomatix takes pictures, preferably a set of bracketed pictures, and creates a high dynamic range (HDR) picture.

Today I downloaded the trial version. It worked. So I paid $99, got a registration key, and went to town. Following is my first HDR picture created from three bracketed pictures of -1, 0, and +1. I look forward to trying this with -3, 0, +3 and even -5, 0, +5.  Since Photomatix can use many many pictures, maybe even a bracketed set of -5, 4, -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3, +4, +5. It will be interesting to see what I can create.

Lake Murray, La Mesa CA, under threatening skies.

The Channeled Applesnail has invaded!

With a 150-600mm zoom lens I can go into the lake without going into the lake, so this morning I went into Lake Murray to get some pictures of the Channeled Applesnail (who names these things?) laying eggs.

The Channeled Applesnail (Pomacea canaliculata) is a resident of the “Top 100 World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species.” Originally from South America, this snail can get up to six inches in size. Mama mia! Are we sure they are from South America and not Mars?

Experts believe that it arrived in the United States via the aquarium trade, and when it got too big for aquariums, it was released into the wild, a practice known as “aquarium dumping.” Established populations exist in Lake Wawasee in Kosciusko County, Indiana; Langan Park and Three Mile Creek in Mobile, Alabama; a pond bordering the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta in Baldwin County, Alabama; Little Wekiva River, Orlando, Florida; a lake near Jacksonville, Florida; Miramar Reservoir in San Diego County, California; and a pond near Yuma, Arizona. I can state with definitive certainty that it also exists in Lake Murray in San Diego County, which is where I got these pictures this morning.

First Yuneec Typhoon H drone pictures and video

Back in December 1976 I flew with three friends on a 4-seat Mooney aircraft from College Station TX to Tyler and then over to Memphis TN. That was my first airplane flight. I’m not sure I ever removed my face from the window.

Then, my first (real) job out of college in 1977 allowed me to do a lot of flying. I lived and worked in Houston but had the opportunity to fly to Dallas, New Orleans, Miami, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Chicago, New York…… It was so much fun. By the time I moved to San Diego in 1993, I had been to 38 of the 50 states.

I sat out of the work force for 11 months after arriving in San Diego, considering myself retired. Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be, especially if you’re used to being around lots of people all the time. So I went back into the work force and got a job that involved a significant amount of traveling–San Diego, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Columbus, Philadelphia, Tampa, Miami, New Orleans………. The list goes on and on and on.

Every time I flew, regardless of where I was flying to or from, my face was always glued to the window. I loved being up above everything looking down on it–mountains, buildings, highways, forests, lakes…… Anything and everything.

I cut back significant on flying after 9/11, especially after the Detroit Shoe Bomber. I just don’t like long lines, don’t like undressing at an airport, and don’t like people touching my junk unless I ask them to.

I missed being above, looking down.

So on March 18, 2017, I bought a drone. The biggest, baddest drone I could find. With lots of bells, whistles, vibrations, and alarms. A Typhoon H Pro with RealSense Technology. It cost $1,899 at Fry’s Electronics but on that day Fry’s paid the $147.17 sales tax for me.

This thing is so big and expensive that it took me three weeks before I was brave enough to try to fly it. Been through several crashes but since I’m only flying six feet above ground, the crashes didn’t do any significant damage. Just three plastic rotors which cost about $7 each.

Then I joined the San Diego Drone Club. A little six-year-old boy set me straight: “Just do it” I think he said. So I set out to find a place where I could practice without being a hazard to people or animals. Collier Park across the street was pretty good but I never know how busy it’s going to get on any morning. I might be able to fly for two hours or two minutes. It’s also less than an acre, so if the children or dogs show up early, I’m outta there.

Today I discovered Eucalyptus County Park. It’s almost 6½ acres, and is rather isolated out in Spring Valley, about three miles from me. I arrived at 6:10 this morning and left 1½ hours later. During that time I saw only one other person. So I got a lot of practice in, especially with landing, and learning how to make the drone move in the direction I want it to move. I also got eight still pictures and two videos.

Here are my favorite two pictures from this morning at Eucalyptus Park:

Grove of palm trees from up above

Bancroft Drive with Mount San Miguel at upper left

And here’s my best video out of four total, two today, taken using the drone’s spinaround mode:

This drone is pretty awesome because of its Intel RealSense Technology. It will communicate with up to 18 satellites to give you GPS, and once it has a lock on GPS, it can pretty much fly itself.

The ST16 Controller has more apps on it than a smart phone and allows you to set so many functions that you will need a margarita by the time you finsh:

The Typhoon H also comes with a remote-control called a Wizard:

The Wizard is what you will use if you get tired of holding the Controller or it starts getting heavy hanging on the lanyard around your neck. With the Wizard, you can set the Controller down, or give it to a friend to hold, and go walking around. If you put the drone in “Follow me” mode, it will follow you at whatever height you set it for. You can also use “Point to fly” mode and just point the Wizard somewhere and the Typhoon H will fly to that spot. There’s also a “Home” mode which helps the drone get back home if it gets lost. It has an Obstacle Avoidance mode so that it can automatically go around trees and such, and you can create a virtual fence so that, regardless of what you do, you can’t go beyond that fence. Useful for if you lose GPS out in the boondocks and your drone starts to “fly away.” Pictures and videos can be taken using just the Wizard. It truly is a wizard at doing what it does.

The battery provides about 25 minutes of flying time, takes 1½ hours to recharge, and costs $139.99 (less if you go to eBay). You get two with the drone. I bought two more, so I’ll be taking four batteries with me into the mountains. I’ll be able to recharge one battery using the in-car charger while driving, so it should be rare that I’ll run out of battery juice or flight time.

My only complaint with the Typhoon H at this point is that the videos in mp4 format are huge and crappy. The video in this blog post was 621 MB straight out of the drone and so crappy that I would be embarrassed to show it to anyone. So I took it to Wondershare Filmora, my video editing program, and simply saved it with a different name. Now it looks awesome and is only 81 MB. Can’t explain that one. Apparently the Chinese have a different mp4 format.

I have more on my mind with the Typhoon H than just playing with it, though. I want to get pictures of abandoned railroad tracks for my railroad research in areas that are somewhat inaccessible out in the East San Diego County mountains. My hiking days are behind me, especially if the hike involves going down into a rocky canyon and up the other side. The canyons are steep but are rarely more than a mile across, and if they are, there are roads to get me closer. With this drone, if I can get within a mile, I can get it the rest of the way.

Eventually I’ll get an FAA 107 commercial drone license so I can do real estate photography and figure out other ways to use this drone to make money.

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Halls of History—Then the tax bills started arriving

I always have done a lot of reading. People have always asked me how I had so much time for reading. I call it multitasking.

When I was in college at Texas A&M University, the lines were long for football tickets, Aggie rings (called “senior rings” at other schools), and the Aggieland (called “yearbooks” at other schools). I learned to take a book or magazine with me to read while waiting in line. Most of the time it was a textbook back then—priorities, you know.

In today’s world, magazines pretty much don’t exist anymore, so Books R Us. I’m usually reading two concurrently, a history book and a fiction book (Stephen King, Lee Child, Lincoln Child, etc.).

The history book I’m reading right now is a history of the area where I currently live: Our Hills and Valleys: A History of the Helix-Spring Valley Region by Thomas Joseph Adema. Here are some tidbits, excerpts, and thoughts:

Picture it. Early 1930s.

Great Depression. You are barely surviving.

You own four acres of land. Your property tax bill arrives.

$1,200. Four times what the land and home are worth.

What are you going to do? Why, stop paying taxes, of course. The Mattoon Act will take care of you.

Must have been the greatest law ever, right? Can’t pay your property taxes? Fall back on The Mattoon Act.

The Acquisition and Improvement Act, its proper name, was passed by the California legislature in May 1925. The bill was intended to streamline the process for, and provide funding for, the construction of needed public works—paved streets, lighting, bridges, reservoirs, better and more reliable water delivery.

Property condemnation was quicker and easier. Community authorities had the power to create “improvement districts” that crossed city and county lines. Thus, if a new sewer line was needed, the areas benefiting were designated “improvement areas.” Bonds were sold to fund the construction, and landowners in the improvement district would pay off the bonds with a yearly ad valorem tax.

Real estate developers loved the law. They used public funds to install street lamps, build parks, and widen and pave roads in their newly subdivided neighborhoods. City councils and utility companies also loved it.

Homeowners initially liked the law because their neighborhoods were improved, but they had no choice about which improvement districts they were thrown into. It was entirely possible that if you lived at the boundary of three cities, you could be in three improvement districts.

As an example, I live at the corner of the boundaries for La Mesa, Lemon Grove, and Spring Valley. Imagine all of them putting me in their improvement districts and taxing me for anything and everything from which I might benefit as a member of the public. Then throw in that suddenly I am unemployed and the nation is in the midst of a Great Depression. Sunk, I would be.

Then the tax bills started arriving.

The killer provision in The Mattoon Act said what would happen if one could not pay one’s taxes: The rest of the members of the improvement district would have to pay them.

So if Johnny could not pay his taxes, no big deal.

Back in the days of The Mattoon Act, Spring Valley had ten households. When Johnny could not pay his $1,200 tax bill in 1927, his tax bill was split between the other nine households.

Joe, after paying his $1,200 tax bill, suddenly got another tax bill for $133.33, his share of Johnny’s bill. Joe couldn’t pay the additional $133.33, so his tax bill was split between the other eight households.

Mary, after paying her $1,200 and her $133.33 share of Joe’s bill, now got yet another tax bill for $16.66. On and on it went.

Homes were lost to foreclosure for failure to pay taxes, or tax liens were placed on their homes, making it impossible to sell the property. Homes fell into disrepair, making them even more difficult to sell.

It didn’t take long before the population rebelled, and The Mattoon Act was repealed in 1931. The damage had been done to many people and many cities and for many years to come. People lost their land and homes but there was no one to buy them so the cities were left with land but no money to pay the bonds on the projects they already had completed. Oh what a tangled web….

In 1935, the United States Supreme Court ruled that The Mattoon Act had been legal, so cities and taxpayers still had to pay the debts which had incurred. It took several years before cities and taxpayers were tax free.

Targeted relief plans were passed, including a gas tax to pay off road bonds. Landowners were given final sums that they could settle with cash. In the case of Johnny, whose home had been foreclosed back in 1927, he got his home back by paying $250 to settle the tax bill.

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Out & About—The secret stairs are no longer secret

I have lived in La Mesa CA (or so close that I had to go through La Mesa to get anywhere) for 18 years. In all that time I kept hearing about the secret stairs. They were so secret that I never found them until one day I was browsing Google Maps to find the street names near some stairs that I knew about. That was when I noticed that stairs are on Google Maps, so I scrolled over to La Mesa and began looking for stairs. I found them!

There are five blocks of them! My little heart was all a-pitter-patter, so I got dressed, told Zoey the Cool Cat that I would be right back (she was oblivious), hopped in the car, and drove over to what I was sure were the secret stairs.

Interestingly, everyone seemed to know about the secret stairs yet no one could tell me where they were, and they are not in any tourist guides or books about La Mesa. That’s how secret they are.

The stairs have quite a few places to stop and rest, which is good because I’m 61 and don’t do a lot of stair climbing. There are about 100 steps for each block—and there are five blocks—of which about 75 of those steps in each block are actual stairs. A few of pictures of the stairs and the views of La Mesa:

La Mesa with Grossmont Center mall and hospital in the upper left

The Interstate 8-California Highway 125 intersection
with a nice view of the Santa Rosa mountain range
which are about 30 miles away.

The stairs are in regular use by physical fitness buffs. It took me almost two hours to traverse them up and down, and to wait for people to get out of my pictures, and to do a couple of re-starts when I was trying to count them!

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Out & About—Natural springs in a desert city

Not too far from me—in fact, directly across the street—is Collier Park. It’s a quaint little park with tennis courts, a boarded up unused building, a non-working drinking fountain, some picnic tables, a creek which somehow always has water in it (this is a desert), some very tall very old eucalyptus trees, and some unpaved trails bordered by California pepper trees. Pretty much the only people who use the park are tennis players from the high school not too far away and people playing with their dogs.

Collier Park currently is being renovated. Since renovation often means “historical destruction,” I decided to do a little research and get some pictures just in case what was there would be no more.

Collier Park is named for Colonel David Charles Collier, a distinguished San Diego citizen and early La Mesa developer. Collier is perhaps best known for organizing the Panama-California Exposition at San Diego in 1915. However, he also built a railroad line to Ocean Beach in 1909 which led to a real estate boom at the beach.

Colonel Collier bought East County lands in 1905, which included the natural springs and what is now Collier Park. By 1907 he had established a bottling works on the site. Those bottling works are the Spring House. From everything I can find, apparently the bottling works are still in existence inside the Spring House.

La Mesa Spring House

Spring House ca. 1912

The natural springs made it a seasonal stopping place for the Kumeyaay Indians. By the 1860s, rancher Robert Allison owned most of the southern part of La Mesa, and his family used the springs to water their herds of sheep.

Water still springs forth from the natural springs, which is why there is water in that creek all the time. Here’s the little drainage line that comes out of the Spring House, draining that natural spring water into the little creek:

In 1910, Collier donated a portion of what is now Collier Park for public use, and by 1920 the City was developing the site for use as a municipal park.

Natural spring creek and spring fountain

The red brick structure in the picture above is the Spring Fountain. Originally it was located at the La Mesa Depot of the San Diego & Cuyamaca Eastern Railroad, as seen in this picture from 1912:

Water for the Spring Fountain was pumped from La Mesa Springs about a mile away. The Spring Fountain was in use until the 1960s when it was moved to Collier Park.

Renovation plans indicated that the Spring House was to be destroyed but the citizenry appeared to have rebelled, and those plans of destruction appear to be on hold while the City tries to figure out what to do. I vote for opening it up as a tourist attraction. It wouldn’t be on the scale of Disneyland but I think quite a few people would stop by to see natural springs smack dab in the middle of a thriving city.

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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:

Sunrises

I have sang at several weddings for friends, the last one in 1984 in Boerne, Texas.

The song I sang for Thad & Charlotte was “Sunrise, Sunset” from the movie “Fiddler on the Roof.”

While I liked the song and realized what it was about, without ever having seen the movie (it came out in 1971, while the musical is from 1964), I was the only one of my friends who was always up in time to watch the sunrise and late enough to bed to catch the sunset, so just the title of the song made it a favorite of mine.

Sunrises and sunsets in 2016 here in the San Diego area have been spectacular almost every day so far.

Following are two of my favorite sunrises, the first one being from this morning.

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Photographic Art by Russel Ray Photos at Fine Art America