Burney Falls in the Fall of '08

Hello everybody!  I am thrilled to the bone!  How about them Democrats! It was such a sweet victory that blogging seemed lackluster by comparison, so I skipped a couple of weeks (times two).  I even bought a vintage coat on ebay to commemorate the purpling of our nation.  Yes, folks, the coat is very purple–purple mohair to be exact!

The savoring period is over, though, and now I’m back on track (ahem). But I just can’t seem to shake the feeling that some serious celebrating is still due me and my kind.  I mean it’s been 8 years since adults occupied the White House.  I am trying so hard to ignore Bush’s last stand and keeping my fingers crossed that he won’t do anything undoable.  Thank god for the (“Congressional Review Act of 1996”) a glorious tidbit sponsored by Congressman Bill Archer.

Pushing all that out of our minds for a day, my partner (Chris) and I drove to Burney Falls, which is about 60 miles east of where we live.  What a gorgeous day on the Modoc Plateau–home to the McArthur-Burney Memorial Falls State Park and the eighth wonder of the world, (reportedly designated so by President Teddy Roosevelt).

Eighth wonder or not (’cause there is a bit of controversy), here are a few pics and links with info on how to get to the magnificent falls, what to wear and some neat walking trails.  I say ‘walking’  because the paths are certainly on the hospitable side. Even your grannie could walk the 75 feet from the parking lot to the viewing area. And have I mentioned the fine steps down to the mist filled basin?

love-eagles

This northern Cal State Park is within the Cascade Range and includes 910 acres of forest, plus five miles of streamside and lakeshore, as well as a portion of the man-made Lake Britton, itself.

While walking along the shore, Chris and I were privileged to spot two mature bald eagles in flight and at rest. Follow the link for a pdf file on the subject.  I didn’t know this, but the Lake Britton/Pit River area is home to one of the largest populations of bald eagles in the contiguous United States.  At least seven pairs nest here, and it is a winter home, as well.

We sat for twenty minutes and watched these creatures on a conifer branch, hanging out side-by-side like lovebirds. One sang to the other. It was truly amazing!   Follow this link for a very short less complex version. I choose to think we heard the male serenading his mate, but it’s my romantic nature.  Maybe the boy eagle was just calling to a fish or two below.

The whole Burney Falls area is a fisherperson’s paradise. With his eagle-eye, Chris spotted some fine fellows swimming close to the shore.  He offered them vanilla Power Bar (for which I scolded him) but they weren’t biting.  A sixteen incher, however, did go for a bit of bagel.

Back to Lake Britton.  Formed by damming the Pit River, it’s fed by four (count ‘em) active creeks full of trout: Cayton, Clark, Hat and Burney.

The park’s centerpiece, however, is the 129-foot Burney Falls–not the highest or largest waterfall in our state, mind you, but often regarded as the most beautiful and definitely worthy of a sendoutcard. Not having seen all of the falls, I am reserving my opinion.  I did delight in the mist filled basin as you can see from the picture below.

About the park’s landscape:  It all began with volcanic activity. Throw in a little erosion–say millions of years worth and Voila! Everywhere you look there is black volcanic rock or basalt. This layered, porous matter holds a ton of rainwater and snow melt, which in turn feeds a very very large underground reservoir.  The basalt also hosts a ton of green moss, as you can see from this pic Chris took along Burney Creek.

Not enough can be said about Burney Falls–but how about these two items:  It releases 100 million gallons every single day and was named after pioneer settler Samuel Burney, a southerner whose offspring are credited with saving the entire area from dreaded commercial development.  Let’s hear it for the McArthurs! They bought the property and gave it freely to the state in the 1920s. it took two years for the state to accept the gift. Now those were some generous, persistent and farsighted folks!

Speaking of which…

Speaking of which, Winter snuck up on us, folks—without much warning, too.  Our four-way irrigation thingy froze this weekend while we were out of town.  Water spewed around the well for three days and two nights. I think there’s some irony here.  What if I told you the seminar’s focus was on energy conservation?

Say this ain’t so, too.  Old news now, but another $140 billion of porky stuff had to be included in that bailout plan before lawmakers could bring themselves to approve it.  Hey, what’s another 100 bill when the National Debt is topping 10 trillion as we speak (10.2 trillion).

How many billions are there in ten trillion (10,000,000,000,000)?  Sad to say, I think my brain needs more place holders.  Just like the National Debt Clock in New York City, both of us done run out of space.

It’s not my fault. Numbers once reserved for the distance between heavenly bodies are now part of our daily lingo.  I think it’s high time we went to scientific notation.  Follow the link for a refresher course or better yet, here’s a quickie:

To write a number in scientific notation, put a decimal point behind the first digit, drop all those place holding zeroes, count up the dropped amount and put that number up in the air real small behind ‘x ten’.

The National Debt would look like this:  10.2 x 10″   Hmmm, still looks a bit unwieldy.  Maybe we need Astronomical Units.

An Astronomical Unit (AU) is the distance from the Earth’s center to the Sun’s center or 92,955,807 miles.  In other words, just one Astronmical Unit equals 92,955,807. If we divide our National Debt by this number, we should get the debt in Astronomical Units.   Drum roll….the National Debt is 107,578 or let’s just say 108,000 AU.  By the way, don’t try this with your hand-helds or adding machines. I found out the hard way that they don’t go up to ten trillion. (error error error)

Happy to say, at 108,000 AU our National Debt gets us out of the solar system and a bit beyond. From Mercury, it’s less than 1AU to Earth, from Venus a little over 1, and from Mars about 2.5.  Jupiter clocks in around 5 and Saturn a little over 10.  Uranus shoots above 19 with Neptune at 30 and Pluto 31.

No worries. We’ll just go to light-years. One light-year equals 5.88 million million miles or ten trillion kilometers. I’m a kilometer hater, folks, but there it is—the exact number we need, ten trillion.  The National Debt is just a little over one light-year.

I don’t know about ya’ll, but I’m feeling a lot better about a National Debt of only one light-year. Our closest star friend, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light-years from the Sun.  The Canis Major dwarf Galaxy is the nearest to our solar system and it’s 25,000 light-years away.  Astronomers who hazard a guess say that the whole universe is a whopping 79 billion light-years across.  I think I’ll stop there.  (a joke)

By the way, folks, one of the things I was supposed to learn at the seminar was how to change my perception.  And judging from this calculated discourse on the National Debt, I do believe that idea took.

When it comes to clean air around Mount Shasta we’ve been very lucky. The smoke has been hanging somewhere else lately, and I’ve been too lazy to visit my Wundermap to find out exactly where.

Can you see how clean the lines are around the pine needles of last night’s sunset, though? I’m having the Great Printer of sendoutcards make a greeting card of this one. Sad to say, the colors were intensified by dirty air coming from the direction of Happy Camp. For the latest posted update on the Panther and N. Ukonom Fire , click here.

Or, check out this paragraph I lifted from the actual report: “Friday, (August 23rd) observed fire behavior on the Panther and North Ukonom Fires was moderate with isolated torching. All fire growth occurred in the wilderness. Firefighters began construction on a segment of line in the wilderness south of Ukonom Lake to check the eastward progression of the fire. Crews continued to make good progress repairing fireline elsewhere outside of the wilderness. Today, crews will continue the line construction in the wilderness. Other crews will repair, mop up and patrol fireline on the rest of the fire.”

I really like that word “torching”. There’s plenty of dead and dried-out trees ready to explode, so I can just imagine what they’re talking about. It’s kind of scary, though. But “Wilderness” is the key word, don’t you think? It provides some very telling info on how the fire is viewed by those in command.

Speaking of viewing, Chris and I flew over the burning zone on the way to Salt Lake because of our convoluted flight path. We couldn’t see any crews, though. We could see many tendrils of smoke from separate blazes, rising up out of the remote mountains on the west side of the plane.

I understand why the Forest Service sometimes follows the let-it-burn policy, but I wonder when all the Northern California Lightning Fires will burn themselves out—you know, run out of fuel jackpots. Here’s what the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has to say:

2008 Lightning Series Overview

On June 20, 2008, a thunderstorm system moved over California striking over two thousand lightning sparked fires. California has recieved ( i before e except after c, folks) assistance from state, local, federal and even national agencies to help combat these fires. More…

Estimation for containment of the Panther Fire, just south of Happy Camp, is August 28th. But like I said before, folks, containment only means someone draws a line around all the blazes, and everybody gets to work trying to make that a reality. Basically, it’s just where firefighters have chosen to make a stand. There are no guarantees.

For a full update on all the Northern California fires, click here. You can get exposed to some real fire-speak. Again, I like their descriptive terms: “creeping and smoldering within interior islands, fuel jackpots, potential for roll-out, smokejumpers…..”

Smokejumpers are exactly what comes to mind, though: Heroic types who jump from the sky into remote inaccessible ares that are smoking. For a more detailed description, follow the Wikipedia link. If you have a yearning to be one, click for their home page, but you might want to read this next line first: “Smokejumpers completed work in Division L (South of Ukonom Lake) and were extracted.

That word “extracted” kind of scares me. Just imagine being extracted from this:

Current Fire Information

When CAL FIRE responds to a major incident the Department will create a web site. Major emergency incidents could include large, extended-day fires, floods, earthquakes, hazardous material spills, etc. More…

Happy Tales,

Laura signing off

p.s. no p.s.

Mount Shasta with real clouds photo by Chris Tatro www.sendoutcards.com/site

It’s very clear and still this Monday morning. Our pollution levels are almost non-existent, but lack of wind is supposed to change all that any minute now.

Sometimes we get these awful smoke burps. They blow in, smother us, shoot our particulate matter levels off the charts then dissipate. It’s weird.

Today’s WunderMap has the black smoke plume headed up and inland into Nevada, Utah, Oregon and Idaho, miraculously circumventing Mount Shasta. I don’t know why.

Stats for the fires closest to Mount Shasta are still pretty grim: As of 8/8/08, the Panther Fire (15 miles south of Happy Camp) which began July 22nd has added another 3500 acres to its tally, bringing the total to about 18,000 scorched acres. According to a U.S. Forest Service press release, the fire is 15% contained.

By the way, folks, containment does not mean a fire is out. It just means firefighters have drawn an imaginary line around all the flames and are working their asses off to make it stay in there.

Word of mouth around these parts says the Panther Fire will be burning well into October. November…who knows?

As always, there are plans to fight fire with fire. Check-out this official Overall Strategy: Direct line and indirect line with low-intensity burnouts backed with contingency lines are designed to create a defensible box around the Blue 2 and Siskiyou fires (including the two fires in one “big box” by connecting firelines). These three approaches have been used on the Ukonom fire to connect it with the Panther Fire to the north. Firefighters work closely together to coordinate the indirect fireline construction plans for both “boxes.” Fire growth within the containment line is expected to continue throughout the summer as the fires run their natural course and burn out or are extinguished by fall rains.

Hmm, fall rains—will we even get our Fall rains this year? That is the question. Back in early June, our governor declared California to be precipitation challenged.

Lack of rain isn’t the state’s only water worry, though. Pumping restrictions aimed at protecting an endangered fish affectionately known as the Delta Smelt are also making things difficult. Folks are beginning to talk about a new “conveyance facility that would divert Sierra mountain water from the Sacramento River north of the Delta and route it around the fragile Sacramento River Delta.”

But what about the here and now? So many fires are still burning in our neck of the woods—about twenty-five, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. They put the total charred acreage at 1,131,655 and counting. Check out the WunderMap to see what I mean. Fires from Northern California are polluting the afore mentioned five states, as we speak.

Speaking of pollution, lucky Beijing got some rain for its bad air; Tennis, Archery and Rowing events had to be postponed. On Monday, city levels dropped by more than half, registering a 38—by whose standards, I’m not sure. The Associted Press swears that its independent readings of Olympic air log in about three times worse than Chinese official readings. For a full pelting on the rain, athletes and pollution readings, try MSNBC. I’m getting bored with all this pollution talk.

It’s so easy to talk about and so hard to fix.

Happy Tales,

Laura signing off.

p.s. As always, SendOutCard information is just a click away. Chris has his own blog now, too. It’s not as neat as mine, but let’s give him time, folks. He knows way more about sendoutcards than I do and that counts for a lot.

Photo taken on Aug. 8, 2008 shows the fireworks of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games held in the National Stadium, also known as the Bird’s Nest, in north Beijing, China. (Xinhua/Chen Kai)

Photo: Wu Hong/EPA

I’ve tried, Folks, but I can’t imagine how important the Olympics must be to Beijing and the rest of the Chinese people. I mean, how important is it for any proud, developing nation to present a clean and harmonious face to the World? The only thing comparable we have in Mount Shasta is our Fourth of July Walk/Run event, complete with parade and ‘fireworks’.

Oddly enough, we also had to contend with dirty air this year because of the Northern California Lightning Fires. The same questions loomed large as the ‘big’ day was drawing near: Should the organizers (Mountain Runners) cancel the yearly outdoor athletic event and lose out on all that revenue because of the pollution danger? Should the Veterans against the Iraq War be allowed to march in the annual Independence Day Parade down main street?

For me, the last question was a no-brainer. I’ve always thought our nation was founded on the basic principals of mindful dissent and free speech. And If those who served our country in battle can’t speak their minds, then aren’t we lost as a nation? The first question was more difficult, though, and I was mighty pleased not to be involved in the final decision ( to run or not to run?…). Almost miraculously, though, the air cleared enough for that fateful commemoration of a fateful day.

ba

Speaking of fateful, 8/08/08 is one of the most auspicous days imaginable in Chinese culture, not because it kicks off the International Olympics, though. The number 8 (ba) logs in as one of the most revered in Chinese Numerology. When drawn, it finishes with an upward curve, symbolizing continuous progress. When spoken aloud, I’m told that 888 in Cantonese sounds like ‘business will easily prosper’ or ‘thrice prosperous’. Hence the reason that many Chinese businesses flocked to the San Gabriel Valley of Southern California, the area code in that vicinity being 818 or “prosperity guaranteed prosperity!”

All in all, It’s pretty easy to see why Chinese Olympic organizers chose this numeric combination for Opening Day. For them, it was just a ‘no-brainer’. As Westerners, however, we still might wonder why anyone would choose a time of the year famous for its horrible pollution and temperature inversions, especially since athletic events thrive on clean air. The answer is still the same, though: The Chinese believe in the power of three eights and they were willing to bet the bank on it.

Even mothers of newborn children got into the act. By Chinese estimates, 500 “Olympic babies” will be born in Beijing on Aug. 8, as many as two thirds by cesarean section. I have to wonder, folks, if that much good fortune extends to babies who are cut out with a knife. As I understand it, a sharp instrument in plain view changes the Feng Shui of auspicious moments. I’m no expert, but it seems like babies who come out on their own are more apt to get the thrice blessings.

Now here’s a silly thought: Turn the clock back nine months; can’t you just envision thousands of young, Chinese women, all with a mad driving desire to copulate. I bet thousands of lucky husbands were counting their many blessings too. It’s interesting to me, though, that so many women would knowingly use-up their one-time government sanctioned right to procreate, as China only approves of one child per family. For good or ill, taxes are levied on families who break the one-child rule, though there are ways around the law if one is resourceful enough.

Speaking of resourceful, a 32-year-old Chinese woman named Zhang Lingyun one-upped all the other new mothers by naming her newborn daughter “Olympic” in Chinese. Zhang Yuanping (the Haidian Maternal and Child Care Hospital president in Beijing) said ” ‘rationality must not give way to Olympic enthusiasm’, but no one had asked to undergo a caesarean section at 8:08 p.m. tonight, he added.

Chinese officials reported similar enthusiasm at the marriage registrars office. Many young couples wanted to stamp their union with the Olympic or 8/8/08 seal of approval. More than 1,500 new couples applied to be married on Friday, almost three times the daily August average. “To cope with the influx, the staff was able to reduce registration time from seven minutes to three.”

WOW! Seven minutes to three minutes! Those workers deserve a big round of applause for shaving so much time off an already concise registration procedure. I can’t imagine any of our government workers being able to do that in a crunch. Didn’t I tell you the Chinese were resourceful?

Laura signing off.

p.s. Click for Chris if you want information on sendoutcards or you’d like to make your own. So many images and so little time!

pre-show pic by Robert Deutsch, USA Today

Moving on. What do Beijing and Northern California have in common? Answer: Polluted air. While our bad air stems from wildfires, Beijing’s is the result of automobile and factory emissions mixed with construction dust.

And now for something completely different supplied courtesy of the “People’s Daily Online”. I would like to close with this opinion of our very own Nancy Pelosi.

“ Once in a long while in History you get an anti Chinese Like Pelosi who have never experience spritual beings and culture. So, when she met the Delai Lama her feet got sweep off and she is drowned by an usual human beings in saffron robes. She went under her magical spell and is not in her usual sanity. A person of her standing suddenly became an illiterate and no history of what the Delai Lama came from. To her from heaven. So, to her just look down on her as a piece of shit garbage.”

To ameliorate the hate of that last image, I offer for your delight this beautiful dahlia that reminds me of a Chinese Chrysanthemum. Chris brought it home for me Friday in a bouquet. How would you like a SendOutCard of this blossom to arrive in your snail-mailbox? It can be arranged. I have contacts with The Great Printer in Salt Lake City.

Laura signing off.

p.s. with this internet post, I have probably sacrificed all visits to China. Now there’s a strange thought…

Just another orange sunset in Northern California, 7/31/08

Hip hip hooray! I’m breathing the sweetest natural perfume in the free world—unlimited internet access suffused with gardenia. My little potted plant just bloomed today. This courageous life form has elected to flower in spite of all the bad air it’s been breathing lately. Speaking of which, our pollution level for Friday morning is under 100! We’ve got a Beijing Blue Sky Day!

Sad to say, the rest of Siskiyou County is not so lucky. Reported levels are choking in at 176 (Yreka) and 179 (Fort Jones), or, well above Chinese safe.

Yesterday, I asked two people in Mount Shasta how they were coping with all the smoke? The first said nothing could be done, so she was ignoring it. The second said toxic vibrations from psychic sources were of more concern.

I figure both of these answers ring true enough. It’s just that on bad air days I have trouble ignoring what I’m breathing or even noticing the vibrations from psychic sources. When the Siskiyou County Air Pollution people advise me to lay low and quit taking deep breaths, I tend to get depressed. That’s why I’ve decided to go on an internet pilgrimage to collect some hope and enlightenment. See what you think:

Blue sky does not mean clean air. Our friends at Greenify Earth (who also like to breathe) define ozone as a colorless gas that can irritate the respiratory tract, produce impaired lung function and cause throat irritation, chest pain, cough, and lung inflammation. They also say that it is the most injurious pollutant to plant life.

Particulate matter, like that caused by wildfires, industrial processes, smelters, automobiles, woodsmoke, construction, road dust, agricultural ground breaking etc., hangs out in the air a long time. It’s the smaller particles that are more hazardous, because they are easily absorbed into the lungs and into the blood stream where they can cause premature death.

In general, though, any form of toxic air pollution damages our natural environment and jeopardizes public health. Air toxins accumulate in the air we breathe and work their way up the food chain, eventually winding up in the food we eat. Eating contaminated food, like fish, and breathing contaminated air from wildfires, traffic, factories and construction, can cause cancer, birth defects and other serious health problems—or, so says The Sierra Club.

After struggling to find something hopeful about this gloomy information, I have arrived at an uplifting thought: At least we have free access to gloomy information. In China, for example, they don’t. And neither do foreign journalists covering the international Olympics. How can the Chinese government be so irreverent when it comes to promises!

Just like its promise to clean up the Olympic air in time for festivities, China had also promised the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to lift its censorship of the internet, or the Great Firewall. But guess what, Folks–they are going back on that promise, too. I know there are those who do not wish to follow links, so I have lifted information about China’s internet ban from the guardian.co.uk.

Journalists at the press centre for the Beijing Olympics. Photograph: Guang Niu/Getty Images

China has reneged on a pledge to provide journalists covering the Beijing Games with unrestricted internet access, Olympic officials have admitted.

Kevan Gosper, a senior member of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) who is overseeing the games, said yesterday that the only uncensored websites journalists at the event would have access to were those related to “Olympic competitions”.

The admission contradicts China’s promise to grant the international media “complete freedom to report” at the games, which it made seven years ago when bidding to host the Olympics.

The blocks on internet sites in the main press centre, which will house about 5,000 journalists, and other Olympic venues will make it difficult to retrieve information, particularly on political and human rights stories the government dislikes. Journalists at the main press centre yesterday found they were unable to access sites such as Amnesty International or any site with Tibet in the URL.

Speaking of Tibet, if you want to get the People’s Republic of China’s perspective, click on the banner across the top of the People’s Daily Online:

Appropriately enough, this link is provided at the top of an article touting their clean air.

And now we have come full circle— back to the subject of “air” and my delicious smelling gardenia! Here is a picture from Wikipedia, large on the page but brave and small against the pollution. I think it will make an inspiring sendoutgreetingcard.

Laura signing off.

p.s. Information about SendOutCards, along with all the opportunities therein, is one click away. It really is easy to design your own sendoutcard, complete with a personal message.

SendOutCards with Chris is a click away. I promise he has all the information about opportunities and more. He can even help you create your own sendoutcard with a personalized greeting.

Speaking of which, greetings from Laura in Mount Shasta. Way way up in Northern California, we know how we feel, but let’s see what the experts are telling us. As of 8:30 A.M., AQI (AIr Quality Index) levels for Siskiyou County are as follows: unhealthy, unhealthy, unhealthy and unreported: Weed 137, Yreka 192, Fort Jones 193 with Happy Camp a blank. Happy Camp (in the midst of many fires) is often not reported. I don’t know if that means the little town has broken its pollution meter or is too busy to bother.

Next we have the statewide fire map. It’s kind of boring, though.

For color, smoke and flames with an interactive punch, I always head for the WunderMap. After moving the satellite across the U.S. to the State of Jefferson, I click on the options: Map, Satellite, Hybrid and Terrain to get a good view of the fires in relation to highways, byways, land formations and cities. All that smoke over our area today looks black and thick, which it is. Chris’s brother flew over Mount Shasta when the smoke was blowing our way and said that’s exactly how everything looked at three thousand feet—horribly horribly black.

I am so grateful that I don’t have to work outdoors. The poor Olympic athletes! Let’s check in on the air they are sucking down their lungs. Our friends at the Wall Street Journal sum everything up quite nicely: China is encouraging the arriving athletes not to believe their own stinging eyes. Here is a strange analogy from Du Shaozhong, the deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Environment Protection Bureau: “It is quite natural,” he told reporters. “For example, when you are taking a bath in the bathroom, you are unable to see the one opposite us. It does not mean there is pollution.”

In other words, soupy skies and stinging eyes are not proof of pollution. The Chinese deputy director goes on to say that we should base our judgments on Chinese collected data, instead of the color of the sky. For some reason (cough cough), there is very little trustworthy data. Could it be that the government has manipulated the sacred data by moving polling stations to less-polluted areas and changing the way it measures pollutants? (cough cough?)

The Chinese officials promised the air would be good way back when they bid for the Olympic Games, but it doesn’t look like they are going to be able to keep their promise. According to BBC weather forecaster Dan Corbett, meteorological patterns in Beijing over the summer are not conducive to dispersing pollution, with high pressure and inversion layers common.

“It is like taking a pan of soup off the hob. It steams, but put a lid on it and everything just sits under the lid.”

Here’s the thing in a nutshell, Folks: Beijing is used to telling people that gray is blue, but this is not going to work as well as it used to. For the Chinese officials, though, it’s business as usual. I’m wondering if they’ve forgotten about the 20,000 foreign reporters in Beijing, the 11,000 Olympic athletes and their trainers, the million or so attendees, not to mention the gazillions who are watching on tube. How many of these folks can be coerced into saying or believing those blue sky day fairy tales?

It’s true that there is very little independent monitoring of Beijing’s air quality, but the BBC has been conducting air tests with a handheld device over the past three weeks, and so far only six of 21 days have met the World Health Organization’s standard for particulate matter. Where, on where are the test results conducted by the International Olympic Committee? (cough cough cough)

The only thing that was sorely missing was an environmentally friendly atmosphere—or,in other words, clean air to breathe. Who would have thought that Los Angeles or New York would have been a better destination for breathing purposes than our beloved Mount Shasta? But it was and I was mortified.

Yesterday, the air was finally cleaner, relatively speaking. Before the brothers hopped on their respective planes, they got to see some pseudo-clear daytime views.

Sad to say, though, today we woke up with puffy smoke-eyes. Gray crud was hugging the ground, leaving the sky directly overhead an off-blue. Maybe this is one of those Beijing blue sky days.

Forget Beijing! How are those California wildfires doing? I smell burning trees and plants in my own backyard. There are disturbing reports about the contents of this smoke—how it’s carrying toxins from burning poison oak and sumac.

Now here’s something everyone agrees on: Never burn poison oak or sumac. When inhaled, it can cause skin and respiratory problems. Poisonous resins in smoke-form become airborne, traveling long distances to find residence in the lungs of unsuspecting folks. This is one of the problems of the fire near Happy Camp, California.

Speaking of fires near Happy Camp…we got two relatively new incidents: Panther Fire (two firefighters dead) threatening thirty homes west of Mount Shasta (41.3582 Longitude: -122.347); and Telegraph Fire east of Yosemite, threatening four thousand homes. The latter was started Friday by someone who was target-shooting. Holy Burning Crap!!! What was he using? A flame thrower? A rocket launcher? (Fox news released a picture of the suspects. (Sorry, bad joke)

The particulate matter is back in full force, obscuring everything in view. We might as well be in Beijing. There could easily be a (Bird’s Nest) Chinese National Stadium where our mountain is supposed to be.

At least Beijing has a plan: Get rid of city traffic, cut factory emissions, halt construction and cheat on the API (Air Pollution Index) readings. For the latest Olympic “smog watch video” click here. Behind that gray wall of Chinese smog is probably a burning mountain range.

All of a sudden, folks, I don’t feel so bad. I’ve just found out that our afternoon pollution reading of 86 would be a blue sky day in China. Sad to say, Beijing’s July24th API reading measured between 115 and 135–not a blue sky day, by any stretch of the imagination.

Anything under 100 is classified as grade 2 or “comparatively good” in the Chinese system and does count as a blue sky day. For those unfamiliar with blue sky talk, Beijing officials say it helps residents understand the differences in air quality. I think I’m understanding just fine. If it quacks like propaganda and waddles like propaganda then guess what, folks…

Waddling on. Ten years ago, China set annual targets for more blue sky days, and despite increases in many pollution causing devices and practices, these inscrutable government officials have attained their goals. Blue Sky Days have more than doubled in less than ten years, going from 100 in 1998 to 246 in 2007. The good news was widely touted inside and outside of China.

And the number of blue sky days is still magically climbing, according to People’s Daily Online (English version May 2, 2008). Ironically enough, this good news on the subject of air quality can be found residing under a colorful click-banner entitled “Tell You A True Tibet”:

Beijing saw 86 “blue sky” days, or days with fairly good air quality, in the first four months of this year, a sign that years of anti-pollution efforts made by the Olympic host city continue to pay off. The number of “blue sky” days was 11 more than the same period of last year, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Environmental Protection.

Just a doggone minute, you cute little Chinese Officials. We’re not slurping up that stuff. Any country in the world can have more blue sky days if it changes what goes into the data mix. Unlike the separate readings we get here in Siskiyou County, Beijing officials provide an average daily reading of multiple air monitoring stations. When the talk of Olympic air(2006) became a sore subject, Beijing officials conveniently dropped the readings from two of the seven city-center monitoring stations and added three readings from less polluted ones. Ain’t statistics grand!

The truth is, Beijing’s air is worse than it was in 1998. Bye-Bye 38 blue sky days of 2006. Bye-Bye 55 blue sky days of 2007. Some say this casts “grave doubt on China’s reported five straight years of continuous air quality improvement”. Golly Gee, Batman, could that be possible?

Sad to say, altering the collection data wasn’t enough to suit the Chinese Government. In the year 2006, officials changed which air contaminants they measured. According to environmental consultant Stephen Q. Andrews(“Beijing’s Sky Blues”), the Chinese substituted measurements of nitrogen dioxide for nitrogen oxides, the latter being much more offensive when it comes to measuring pollution standards. “Since then, not a single day has exceeded the standard… thanks to the new, more easily attainable criteria”.

It really doesn’t matter how you measure it, folks—air is a resource and Chinese officials don’t particularly value it, especially when national progress is at stake. They don’t value their athletes much either, not to mention any other countries’. Sad to say, men and women of the outdoor events are definitely putting themselves at risk

Not sprinters, though. They barely breathe, so I’m told; but “marathon runners take about 40 to 50 breaths per minute and there is a real need for oxygen to be transported to the muscles. Some, like Gebrselassie, are refusing to attend, for fear of life-time lung damage.

Let’s see now, that’s a hard one…Life-time lung damage or Olympic Gilded Gold.

Laura, petulantly signing off.

p.s. Oops, I almost forgot my mission. Information on SendOutCards is one click away.