Where I am… (not a geographic question)

Work is currently stressful… I may have suggested in an earlier blog post that currently find that  I dislike work… not work, or work place as much as my work situation…  while there have been small victories (we turned on the heat today), sadly not much has changed… 

So, It’s late, (as in the hour of the day)  but I am not interested in bed…  really, I am interested (in bed), but too restless, too distracted, and not ready… I have walked the dog… tried to read a book… nothing is working… so I sit at the computer… checking email, making random Google searches…  thinking of an escape…

Tonopah (Nevada) is beginning to look like a good vacation destination… this could be considered an issue… either my standards have slipped, or I am so desperate for a vacation that I am willing to deal down, from my routine goal of a nice beach in the Caribbean  to the center of Nevada…   to Tonopah, Nevada, a  place better known for holes in the ground (aka abandon mines) and rattle snakes … (they have gambling establishments (legal gambling establishments) and whore houses (legal whore houses) but I am not that interested  in the former and the lovely Tina might object to the latter… 

Of course, I believe rattle snakes are good eats (apologies to Alton Brown)… but if big enough for a steak… lemon and season salt and a few minutes on each side on the grill… smaller snakes, gut out like a trout, skin, and skewer… more lemon… pepper…  baste… but I digress,  In the background, Conan is on… I usually don’t stay up this late but sleep seems elusive.  I am not that interested in Conan… but Conan is my current escape…at least at 12:02 am on a early Thursday morning.

According to Google I would be better off in Texas if I am searching for culinary rattlesnake… 

I have reservations at a Tonopah hotel… for early May….  Tonopah as a vacation destination is not a joke…  There is a historical symposium in Tonopah this May… that might be my core reason for going there…

It isn’t my first time in Tonopah… I may have passed through as recently as last September… I may have purchased gas (the Jeep carries a log book, with an entry for each gas purchase…)… so evidence suggests that I may have slowed down… and stopped… but walked around (beyond a gas pump) or stop for food (beyond the obligatory beef jerky (the Nevada desert is known for “alien beef jerky” but that is not found in Tonopah, and one has to settle for the common teriyaki beef jerky)  

I may have made snarky jokes about those who move to Nevada to escape… 

So, I am headed back to Tonopah, to stay a couple of nights… eat a couple of meals… (I am thinking Mexican)  and I am looking forward to the experience… Someplace not here…  A place to escape too…

The brave new information age?

By most measures I (and family) am/are connected… We live on the northern fringes of what is known as Silicon Valley… We have high speed internet (T-3 via fiber optic cable… very fast) with wifi at home… my phone can stream data and can be configured as a wifi hot spot… I have a lap top and an Ipad (some are android pads), so does the wife and daughter and many extra daughters and the son when home and others… visitors… we all are on line… here at the place we call home… This is the way of the modern world…

I have email accounts (more than one, maybe more than 5)  I have been blogging for 8 years… (I had a blog on Xanga, back in 2005, before Blogger…)  Of course, there is Facebook and Myspace (does anyone beyond stray musicians use Myspace anymore?) and Yahoo Groups…  and web sites… I had my first web site (now abandoned) “The Birth of California Narrow Gauge”  back in 1996.

I once was driving east, between Tucson and El Paso, on I-10 while a passenger, one of my extra daughters, was on line, on Ebay, buying a pair or Christian Louboutin shoes… (I have many women in my life, a wife, a daughter, extra daughters who visit often… all (at least many) seem to have shoes with red soles… (some of them many pairs…))

I have blogged from an alluvial fan in Death Valley, next to a camp fire, with a coyote a hundred yards off, lurking near…  On another occasion from a camping ground in Mesa Verde, next to a camp fire, from the Antarctic Peninsula, from Tasmania… I once made a reservation for a tour of our house museum, along the shores of San Francisco Bay (the museum) while on the shores of Lake Titicaca, while on vacation… On another occasion, I needed a weather report, while driving in the Nevada desert… Tina forwarded a report… another time, while in Utah, somewhere north of the Great Salt Lake… on a dirt road… a map might have been emailed… For the most part, I am never far from information…

The lovely Tina may in fact work for the god being which is Google… This doesn’t make us more connected, but gives us occasional insights to the community that facilitates our connectivity… I am not part of the industry, but like the coyote in Death Valley, I sniff about the edges…

So, the world, our world, is very connected, at least most of the time… 

Except at work… 

My work, not the lovely Tina’s work, which as expected is always very connected… At my work, the connections get difficult.

At work, (my work) our access to the big bad evil internet is restricted… We are scared of the internet, scared of staff wasting time on the internet… scared of unauthorized information being released via the internet… At work we are scared of the internet…

I can’t access my blog from work… or any other blog… When I try, a little box pops up and says

Content blocked by your organization

Reason: This Websense category is filtered: Blogs and Personal Sites.

URL: http://randyhees.blogspot.com/

But, the softwear that blocks blogs (and other internet evil) is capricious… It universally blocks anything from Blogger, but Word Press sites seem to sneak through…  (my blog sneaks through sometimes…but only if following a link instead of searching for it directly… the Websense system isn’t that smart)

So, at work, My blog, (and in theory) all blogs are blocked…  (much of the current information about other house museums is found on blogs… but that doesn’t matter, they are blocked) Most discussion boards are blocked…  Anything that might be naughty (booze, porn, etc, including sports and places to purchase tickets for sporting events)  is blocked (at least that is understandable… occasionally heavy handed, but understandable) 

But I can access Hulu, and stream full episodes of TV shows… From my work computer... because its logical… or not.  I know this because a staff member spoke of an episode of “Family Guy” (specifically “Joe’s Revenge”), where Peter visits a house museum… (the Pershing House in El Paso, it has a facebook page)  “Is that his table? Is that his bed?  Is that his window?... Wow”   (If you run a house museum this is really, sadly funny) So, since she mentioned it, I goggled it (we can google… we are not that backward) and the Hulu link showed up… and worked… because streaming full episodes of TV is sooo conducive to productive work…

In my employer’s defense, there are logical reasons for some of the sites blocked… as a government agency, they block file sharing sites… Dropbox for example, for fear that we might put a government document there, outside of controls about public access and record keeping laws…  For a long time Facebook was blocked, but then the City established Facebook pages for City in general, for the Police Department, for Economic Development and for the Water Park…  so now, we can look at Facebook from our work computers, and can now waste our time looking at pictures of cats.   Picasa Web was blocked, but was un-blocked at my request so it could be used to send photos to our architect…  Appeals are considered and exceptions may be granted for good reason (or good behavior)

Blogs on behalf of the government are a concern based on the possibility of public feedback and how those comments could be moderated, but also for what we, the employees might say in public… Even if the Navy has authorized a US Navy Destroyer to blog from deployment... we won't be... we just won't go there...

I should probably shut up now, and go look for pictures of cats…. and snarky quotes to re-post on this blog…

A tale of two (or three Daves) and music, and broken guitars and airplanes…. and trains….

Sometime in 2008 or so, Canadian folk musican Dave Carroll lost his Taylor guitar to the United Airlines baggage monkeys…  Well, he didn’t lose it, but after they were through (or threw) with it it wasn’t much good, at least as a musical instrument… 

United was not (at least initially) sympathetic… That loss led to three songs (start with “United Breaks Guitars”…. Search from there)  and a line of airline proof guitar cases…  The first song has something like 16 million downloads… likely many more…  

I may have blogged about it… in 2009… 4 years ago…  I may have I mentioned how much I dislike United Airlines… I pay extra to avoid United Airlines… 

Fast Forward… I have a favorite radio station… KFOG… For a big commercial radio station they are surprisingly local and accessible…  I may have blogged about them too…  More than once… including several posts about the retirement of long time DJ Dave Morey… an icon of Bay Area radio… the father of 10 at 10… the first DJ back on September 16^th 1984 when the station, at least the rock version was born… Back in December 2008, (December 19^th, 2008) Dave retired… Steph and I waved “Fogheads Love Dave” signs at the Christmas concert… I noted his last song on the blog (this blog)… plus the songs played by Annalisa afterward…  (Steph and Annalisa got to know each other… at a Live from the Archives release…  Annalisa called me, while I was boarding a ship… in Tampa, headed for Central America)… we may have seen Annalisa since… even since she left KFOG…. There are blog posts about that too)  

KFOG has a recording studio in the station… they invite artists into the studio to record tracks both for general radio play, but also for inclusion in their annual “Live from the Archives” CD…  They invite listeners in… 20 at a time… to the recording sessions… either via email, or by being “caller No 10” (it is not always caller no 10… but you get the idea)  over the years, I have been caller No 10 4 times… once, they changed the date… and I had to pass, but, I have been in the studio three times…

Most recently… last week…Steph and I were there to see folk singer David (aka Dave) Wilcox…  Steph and I were at the Studio at 8:30 am… on a Thursday… into the studio by 9:00…  It was a great session… conversations and introductions then 5 songs, then conversation, then one more song… for Rosalie… DJ… host… person who gave me tickets… (for I was caller No 10... )

We discovered that Dave Wilcox has a different airline/guitar strategy…a airline proof guitar… no wood, all carbon fiber… nearly indestructible… you can hand it to baggage monkeys with confidence, Indestructible… the coackroach approach… He says it it is a good guitar… not a wonderful rich lively guitar… but a good guitar… and you can hand it to baggage monkeys… 

Then, he sang a song about worn things… before, he talked about  a ride on a cable car… and how he appreciated the well used character of the car… chipped and worn paint… a patina…  not worn out, but well and long used…  Equated this to a guitar… no a carbon fiber guitar… a wooden guitar…

The tale of the cable car spoke to a personal experience… My hobby is rebuilding old, wooden railroad cars….I have a bit or experience with cable cars, and the men who today maintain them.   Today, in a shop south of a street formerly called Army, three men build and rebuild cable cars for the Municipal Railway of San Francisco… building new cable cars of wood, pulled together with iron rods… 

A few years ago, I tuned a wooden passenger car… a wooden car held together with iron rods… as I tightened rods, the car straightened… sags disappeared…  It was magical… I have spent the last three years researching, trying to find a 19^thcentury reference to what happened when I tightend the various rods holding the car in tension… much like tuning a guitar…

The cable car guys I have talked to tell me a new cable car isn’t right for about 10 years… it’s too tight at first… too rigid… it needs to break in… get loose, and get lively…

It seems a cable car, a wooden railroad car is much like a good guitar… It is alive… The use, and cracks add to the beast…  we could make it “better” out of iron and graphite… but it wouldn’t be as lively… as alive…

I will stick to wood…

History and Laundry powder... and 20 mules...

There are themes in history, which with retelling becomes legends… still fact based, but with additional “facts” added… extra tales appended… until the story as told is far removed from the origin story…  Someone or some group have a motivation to own the legend…  And will shape and mold the story meet their needs…

It’s a lot like the Republican Party and Fox news… Fox news does not create news… but their output is not constrained by facts as understood by a freshman history student bound by foot notes and Chicago rules of style…

Previously I have ranted about the Alamo… and the story not told… the story created… The Shrine, not the historic site which you can visit in San Antonio… It is a story created to support the Myth of Texas…  A story brought to us in Technicolor by John Wayne.  The Alamo and the men who died there deserve better than the Myth of Texas… 

But this story is not about the Alamo and the Myth of Texas… at least not this time… its about 20 mules, or 18 mules and 2 horses and three wagons and Death Valley…  The Myth of the 20 Mule Team… and borax… it’s about borax… and house wives purchasing borax fortified cleaning products…

The 20 mule team tale, at its purest, at the beginning,  is about a team of 18 mules and 2 horses, used to pull a set of 3 wagons (2 ore wagons, one water wagon) carrying borax from borax  mines in Death Valley to the railhead.  This operation used specially designed wagons, larger, particularly well built.  At best the whole thing was in service less than 8 years… 

The wagons from this operation, specially built extra large extra heavy wagons with 7’ diameter rear wheels (hint, wheel size might be important… ) were reportedly later used elsewhere, particularly at Daggett California  (John Daggett, the Daggett of the town of Daggett is the lovely Tina’s great, great uncle… his gold box is sitting here in the room with me as I write this… There is a family story about dimes… but I digress).  It is almost certain that other similar operations (large ore wagons, in trains with large number of animals) were used, both before and after the Harmony works operation.  

Today, “20 Mule Team” wagon sets are displayed within Death Valley National Park, at the Harmony Borax works, at Furnace Creek in Death Valley, and elsewhere at the active borax mine at Boron (complete with 20 fiberglass mules…).  As recently as 1999, one set (the Boron set?) was occasionally operated as a historic reenactment.  It might have been seen that year on National TV on January 1^st, in the Rose Parade… 

The history of the 20 Mules Team operations is highly confused and romanticized.  I blame Ronald Reagan…  among others… but Reagan is an easy target…  And really, he was just the narrator, for only a couple of years on what was possibly the longest running western on TV…and radio...  It was his last acting gig before entering politics… Politics….???? Could this be another Alamo – 20 mule team parallel?  The Myth of the West, as political banner… as political symbol?  But beyond Reagan, there is Borax Smith, (the man who created modern Oakland) and Steven Mather who turned 20 mule team into a trade mark, then went on to create the National Park Service…

This is a heavy load for one myth to carry… but these are big wagons and we have lots of animals…So, last week I found myself in Death Valley… the National Park… and there I found two of the wagon sets, and a museum, and came away confused… I went to  the library… my library, and found 6 books on Death Valley, and 5 on railroads of eastern Nevada, and a few more on mining and banking in the mining towns of Nevada…. I might have done a Google search or two…I am still uncomfortable with my knowledge… The story is still too mythological… there are still questions…  

The two sets of wagons in Death Valley appear to have rear wheels which are 6’ in diameter… (I told you it might be important…)  They may be ore wagons, but may not be “20 mule team” borax wagons…   I have located 3 or 4 different origin stories for the 20 mule team story… (none of which include Ronald Reagan or John Wayne.)  The interpretive panels found in the park have not answered as many questions as I might have wished...

I may not know (yet) the story, but it has a hero… Steven Mather… the father of the National Park Service… He was the one, back about 1900 who recognized that the 20 mule team was a compelling story… and made it the trademark of The Pacific Coast Borax Company, and that the compelling story could be used to sell soap…

 

We are back to suburban house wives and cleaning products… and a good story