An Old Soul

 Penny Kelsch Barlow was a mother and friend.

My family tree has more limbs than most, and Penny was a loved one.

I remember one of the first times I met her: it was at a 4th of July Carnival in probably about 1979 or 80 and and I was at a park in Utah with Penny and some of the other kids, and this is when I was first getting to know her so we didn't really know what to make of each other and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to call her mom, or what exactly the deal was.  A divorce makes lives complicated.

I recall being very nervous, because my mom and probably set the stage for it to be awkward. I have a lot of empathy for my mom now but at the time it was difficult.

I remember Penny telling me these words: " I want you to know that I'm your friend, not your boss or mom."

And, that's how it always was. 

Now I wasn't always with Penny but I honestly cannot remember her ever saying one cross word or negative thing about anybody.

She made it a point to visit us when she was in Southern California and now more than ever, I remember those times, and I'm really happy she came. 

While nobody normally wants to lose their life, those who knew Penny knows that she was looking forward to being with her one true love. 

My dad left too soon and when I heard that Penny was hurt bad, and that she was saying " Ed was going to help her get better", I knew in my heart that it was happening.  I believe he was there when she crossed over, watching and waiting for her. 

While she was not my mother, she was a Super Mom to her brood and had a hand in teaching a great many kids how to be good people. 

Her calm demeanor and kind spirit left an impression on me and many others.  Her children share her gentle nature. As the oldest of my dad's kids I got to know her longer than the rest, and I feel a real sense off loss. 

Everybody loved Penny Kelsch Barlow, and I proud to call her one of my Moms. 

What A Long Strange Trip It Is

The iconic " Steely" towers over the Las Vegas Strip. 

The recent death of La Mesa resident Bill Walton coincided with what may be the final run of what remains of The Grateful Dead, and there is no doubt that, if his health had allowed he would have been at every one of The Dead and Companies residency shows at the new Sphere venue in Las Vegas. 

He was one of the born-again Deadheads. I noticed that much, if not most of the content in the news stories surrounding his passing included his gushing comments about The Grateful Dead and the impact they had had on his life. It was almost as if his basketball career was second to who he became as one of the curious followers of what the casual fan might have called " The Dead". 

I was late to the party. I got to see them play back in 1990, and once again a year later, but I did not become a Deadhead until I saw the current iteration at The Sphere. 

Like many, I considered the era to be over when the band's iconic leader Jerry Garcia died. My wife is like Bill Walton was; he would speak of the band and particularly about its leader in something that was mildly fanatical. Indeed, Jerry Garcia was known uncomfortable with his demi-God status in the hippy culture, and it takes some time to figure out why it all got so big, so ongoing, and still vibrant today, almost sixty years after they started their long strange trip. 

I think I understand it now, but I had to see it and hear it to get it. 

The Dead and Company, as the remainders of the band are now known, recently started a residency at the new Sphere venue, and after seeing their opening night without me my wife insisted that we had to go see, it because, she explained, The Dead and Co. were not just a cover band rehashing out the old favorites, but that like the venue itself, it was something new and amazing.  The band was revitalized and alive again somehow. It was important for her that I understood what it was that they meant to her, and that is what it was with Bill Walton. He wanted to tell everybody about it, because for them, what it was had been something profound, something beyond music. Mr. Walton and my wife both seemed to have had life-altering changes because of this culture and the music. 

We navigated the curiously packed San Diego Airport and made our way to Sin City. On the approach, you can see The Sphere, and the other past wonders, like the pyramid of The Luxor. Our flight had been delayed and it was a mad scramble to the venue to arrive after they started. We found our seats with empty bellies and immediately it became clear that this venue was as much a part of the show as the band. 

The Sphere must be experienced., it cannot be properly described. Like a Deadhead trying to explain the band to someone who had never heard of them, trying to describe The Sphere is like trying to describe a rainbow to a blind person; it feels like the future. There are something like 40 individual speakers per seat and the venue can have some sections receive audio in Chinese, and some in English, because the sound is focused like a laser beam. The scale is massive and incredible visuals and giant screens of the band play at the same time. For a short time, it was hard to judge the band as the visual experience was demanding my attention. 

I couldn't help but be impressed by the musicianship of the relatively young John Mayer, and the rest of the new blood in The Dead. He was doing many of the key licks of Jerry Garcia, but taking them a bit further in some ways. His vocals were not trying to sound like Jerry at all, but all the words were there in all the right places. 

In short order, I was dancing with the rest of the arena. Back in my day, when the band did their drums and space thing, that was bathroom and beverage time. The band does a drum section of the show, where this giant contraption with dozens of drums and assorted instruments is played by three members of the band. This is when the haptic seats became noticeable. The seats move and/or have speakers in them, because when the drums hit certain notes you can feel it through the chair. The sound seems to be three-dimensional, at times bouncing noticeably off the front, back, and sides and changing direction. It was not like panning a speaker left and right, it was all around you/ Then, the original drummer Mickey Hart did something with an instrument called the beam and triggered light effects that were unlike anything I had ever experienced before. A one-hundred-and-fifty-foot brain appeared on the screen with the nerves pulsating as triggered by whatever it was he was doing. It was incredible! I would pay the ticket price just to see that one aspect again. 

We came back for the Friday show with better seats and again on Saturday. Each night the emotional impact built on me. These old favorite songs were new again.

The Grateful Dead is an acquired taste. It took me three decades to acquire it, to become born again Dead. That's how it works for many of us; you have these great old songs, and because you grew up hearing them on the radio, memories of key life events become associated with the songs, so when you get to experience it again, it can be that the realization that the songs are timestamps of moments in your life, it hits deep. 

{ Extra Content?} 

I wanted to better understand this hippy culture and the way that it did not seem to be fleeting because I have known people who are like Bill Walton was; not just a fan, but more of a disciple. It was not enough for folks like Bill Walton to attend shows put on by the band, they were prone to something that felt like the proselytizing of a religious zealot, where they had to tell everybody how profound the experience was and convince them that they had to come along. They would declare things like, " You got to get on the bus, man!" and look at you with a big smile hoping you'd say yes. 

For many, including myself, it was like trying to describe a rainbow to a blind person. 

My significant other is one of these acolytes of the band, and in particular, the late guitarist Jerry Garcia. She kept showing me videos of The Sphere in Las Vegas, and there seemed to be a buzz building in the online chatter groups that the venue was a must-see. ( end extra? Content) 

"I am the human being that I am today because of the Grateful Dead": Bill Walton attended at least 859 shows

I had a friend who was one of the more hardcore Dead fanatics back in the day. He insisted that this was something I had to see. " A band beyond description."  He bought me tickets to a set of weekend shows in a college field called Cal State Dominguez Hills. He proudly declared these his first Miracles. I had no idea what he meant, but could not resist a free concert, plus, he was very sincere about the band, in an almost sentimental way, sharing it with me seemed important to him, so on May 5th, 1990 I attended my first Grateful Dead concert with my best friend at the time, a drummer named Steve Harris. 

I was into progressive rock; polished bands delivering tight, note-for-note performances of often complex music. It was extremely hot. We were sitting fairly close to the stage on the grass. I remember a lady in front of us said, " I wish I knew somebody who was at their first show," and my buddy quickly spoke up that it was mine. 

" Here," she said, handing me a tiny square of colored paper, about the size of a tic taco, " eat this." 

I looked at Steve for assurance that I'd be alright, and she gave us both a 16-hour psychedelic ride. I had never experienced LSD before, and after about one hour the situation became almost overwhelming. The band strolled out onto the stage well before the gift she had given had kicked in and proceeded to take about five minutes tuning and making various disorganized sounds from their instruments, which was not something I had ever seen before. And when they started, they kind of fell into the song, the vocals kind of...sloppy seeming. The crowd seemed to approve, but I wasn't getting it. I didn't hear any of the songs from them I had heard on the radio. At one point they took a break and the drummers played what seemed like a long section with drums only before the rest of the band came out. What followed was the strangest thing I had ever seen musicians do. It was like they were intentionally playing bad and making discordant sounds that did not seem to link together in any discernable way. 

It sounded, in my altered state, weird and almost...ominous. My buddy Steve leaned over to me and said, " Space." 

I remember feeling almost annoyed because there was so much hype going on about how good these guys were. Finally, they started a song the crowd seemed to recognize, and it was like the whole audience exhaled at once and relaxed in unison, this guy who looked more like a grandfather than a Rockstar started to sing something about needing a miracle every day. Steve explained that a Miracle wasn't Just a free concert ticket, it was a gift. 

We eventually had to leave the venue, but were in no condition to drive. Steve played his current favorite on the cassette player in his car, a slower number called " Box of Rain " while we waited. He explained that the song was about the bass player's father dying of cancer. I remember still not getting it, Saying something like they sounded like a low-budget CSN and Young with passable but loose harmonies. 

Eventually, my friend died of cancer. When I hear the song Box of Rain now I am taken back to the good times we shared before the sickness blossomed in him like a poison flower, and invariably I will weep. 

On the last night of the three shows people were doing the exit shuffle, and at one point some escalators brought people up and down from the four levels of the long-term up and escalators face each other, and on each one other last show for us, the people cheered each other as our eyes met. I doubt The Sphere designer intended this, and maybe only hippies would bring that true general love and goodwill for their fellow humans that was shown that night when each escalade became a hippie conveyor belt with people cheering not the band this time, but for each other. 

They Love Each other and Lord, you can see that it's true. 

The Sphere is a must-see attraction in Las Vegas. Even if you think you hate The Grateful Dead, you should try to see a show and take in the history that is displayed at the casino adjacent to the music venue. If you want to see the people who are devoted followers of the band and know what they are about, you go to a thing called Shakedown Street. That's where artists who make the tee shirts like Bill Walton wore, and a great many other creative things congregate, this time with the facilitation of the city and casinos. You can ask them what it was about the band, and for many, they will just say, " They are a band beyond description." Others will articulate it. They might explain that for many of them, the music of the Grateful Dead and the community that it created was as close to a religious experience for them as they ever got. Jerry Garcia was the reluctant High Priest. He was never reluctant to perform music, but he saw himself as a working man, not somebody to make a demi-God out of. 

Back home, I sought out the local Dead cover band scene. There are around a dozen bands In San Diego that play most Grateful Dead music, and no less than 1,800 bands nationwide with at least six of them being full-time touring acts capable of selling thousands of concert tickets. 

One of the San Diego bands has played Winston's bar in Ocean Beach every Monday night for over thirty years, and it's usually packed with an enthusiastic crowd. They are called Electric Waste Band. The other prominent band is called Easy Wind, with a relatively new band called Diego Dead bringing a lot of energy, the scene around all things related to The Grateful Dead seems bigger still than any other band. There is no other band that has six different cover bands playing its music exclusively every single weekend, in just one town. 

The long strange trips seem like they will be going on for a while. The Dead and Co call their run at The Sphere " Dead Forever " and at least in our culture, I cannot imagine anything that will surpass the love and long-term devotion the fans of the band share for the music and each other. 

I get it now. 

Wait

I knew something had to change.

I have spent the first half of this year on an almost absurd winning streak. Business is booming. My marriage has recovered from my being unfaithful; my endeavors seem blessed in every way. I was unfaithful, but my mistress was alcohol. I was so far removed from that mentality that I rarely had a thought about the bottle anymore, let alone had a craving.

There was a stern, cynical voice in the back of my thoughts. It took in all this success. It noted my freedom from alcohol, and it seemed to say to me, "You just wait. "

It got me thinking about hard times in my life and how, ultimately, the only answer was to wait it out. Eventually, the hard times phase out, and the pain goes away. Time heals all wounds, as they say.

Eventually, you get to a place where the hard times are a more distant memory, and you can say things to others whom you see struggling, such as, "It takes a little pain to punctuate the beauty in life, else it would get boring. "Or that old line, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger. "

Better advice would be to wait it out because life can't be all a shit sandwich all the time, can it? Surely, if you don't give up and keep sucking in the wind and making turds every day, then, eventually, that which is making things hard will go away and leave you to your happy times and good friends, right?

Right.

In January of 2024, I began to notice changes in my body.

It was easy to dismiss it, to deny its reality. But I could wait no longer and took myself fearfully to the doctor.

Tests were ordered, and a CAT scan showed an abnormality in my bladder. 

The doctor called me and informed me that the wait was over. I now knew what the next hard time would be like. "I hate to rain on your parade, "he said. I know you said you don't have time for lunch, but you have to make time to come in right away for camera work. "

I know two things about doctors: it's terrible if they are urgent about anything. And, if they say something will be "slightly uncomfortable, "it will be torture.

The discomfort was much as I expected, but it was bearable after the camera was inserted and the doctor pumped my bladder full of water to expand it for viewing.

The image on the screen looked out of place. 

It had the texture of a wart and stood in stark contrast to the rest of my bladder, which I was viewing on the screen next to the examination table. 

"There it is, "the doctor said.

He then took me on a quick tour of that part of the inside of my body. There were bubbles and a slit that he said was the portal to my kidneys. He showed me the healthy flesh. It reminded me of when I was a kid and used a flashlight up against my cheek with my face close to the mirror and my mouth open. You can see the veins and muscles through your skin. It was like that: the walls of my bladder looked the same until the camera focused in on the evil-looking interloper.

It was like a wart. It protruded from the wall of my bladder, popping in to view on the screen in high-definition horror, like a maniacal jack-in-the-box. Underneath it was a spot that looked like a raw wound. That must be where the blood was coming from.

I blurted out the obvious question.

"Is it cancer? "

The doctor smiled and said confidently, "I can't tell...but most likely! Either way, I'm going to cut it out. "

* * *

Just like that, I am in line for surgery. He explains that they cannot diagnose or use any of the scary terms like "stage___ "until they do the surgery. They cannot see if it is just the surface or growing into the wall; what they can see is that it is close to my kidneys, and that is less than optimal.

Like a choose your chapter' book where the story unfolds in different ways depending on which part of the book you select ( or have selected for you ), he describes the various scenarios that might play out. My choices are a quick surgery followed by regular camera work because it is likely to return, a long surgery where they have to put a stint in my kidney, to the Grand Voyage of cancer, the dread metastatized death march, where it already spread through your bones and such. The odds are low, but so are the odds of getting bladder cancer at 55.

Such a thing strips away the many layers of denial that your mind erects like the bulwarks of a fortress. It is easy to wish away and convince yourself there is no problem.

I walked out of the office in what felt like slow motion. My legs felt heavy. My internal voice was stern and declarative: I have cancer. 

This unleashes a torrent of emotions. Is disbelief an emotion? Is shock? They are loud and present. Also, life flashes before my eyes—not my own, but my children's. Will I really not be able to guide them? Will I know my grandchildren? All drama aside, the fact is what I have would be fatal within two years if untreated.

All of the facts and statistics, the five-year survival rates are at my fingertips, thanks to the internets. The odds of the disease reoccurring are high. So, this is my new reality. I will most certainly die of cancer, and much sooner than I expected. 

I have a man cave. Well, it's really more of a storage unit. But it is my space where I store my things. One side of my cave is all of our Christmas decorations. The other side is music and climbing gear, my tents and misc. Tools. There is a shelf where I store gifts I have started to box for my siblings in my storage. I come from an absurdly large family. It's a story unto itself. I am the oldest of my father's kids, and boy, did he have a lot of kids. He had so many kids he apparently ran out of name ideas, and I have a younger brother with the same first name. 

I know it's rather morbid, but as I am the oldest, I had the idea to make something special for each of them, as I'm likely the first to check out. I couldn't give one a pinball machine and the other a Tiffany Clock. I wanted it to be artistic, as I've always believed that works of art absorb some of the life energy of the artist. I gave them part of myself by giving them a piece of my art. Some I do not know. It's always been a source of distant pain in my heart that I could be at a grocery store checking out, and the clerk could be one of my younger siblings, and we would not know each other.

I decided to use the main thing I'd used to get sober and survive the boredom of mindless COVID lockdowns as my gift to them all. I started building each of them a small model airplane. They would be as detailed and involved as you could imagine, and each one could take a month or two to build.

In my space, I looked at those Christmas lights and the paltry two gifts I'd managed to box, and it hit me.

I looked at the Christmas lights, wondering if I would install them this Christmas, not because they are annoying. The idea of building another twenty-nine models for my siblings ( yes, I have that many siblings ) suddenly seemed an unlikely proposition. I have them all stacked up and ready to go—a stash, as it is known. 

Now the thought was to boxing them and selling them, while I still could, because there is no possible way, my own rather terrified internal voice calmly pointed out, I would live to build them all.

Suddenly, that feeling is crushing.

All of these things, these toys...my guitars and sporting goods, my books and toy airplanes and music gear all were bought with the purpose of filling my free time, to be there for me when I had leisure time. Time to waste. I was looking at a room full of things meant to make passing my time easier and funner. The decorations were there to be put up to mark the passing of more time as a family.

Now, it all seems so silly.

Just yesterday, I had time. Now, time was a siren blaring, an alarm clock sounding that it was time to conclude unfinished business because the buzzer was about to ring as the time clock ran out.

Such news makes one instantly compile lists, both mentally and in practice.

Okay, I tell myself, it's time to get busy.

I found lists of things I would NOT be doing. should I have a death sentence. No more painful dentist work. Back taxes can wait. News had no more real estate to occupy in my brain, and all the political nonsense and shrieking college kids got evicted in a hot minute.

I would make peace with anyone I could think of who I'd wronged (thankfully, this is a pretty short list) and do whatever I could to set my wife and kids up to be...without me. 

The surgery came. There was no pain of any sort, but I left the hospital with a catheter. Fun stuff.

Now, I wait for the lab results to tell me if I have cancer. This is the worst part so far. It ratchets up the anxiety level to new heights.

Some things are not going so well after surgery. Some indications of complications. I call the doctor to report the scary stuff, and I'm told to wait for a return call. The time comes and goes with no call. Do I wait some more?

What fantastic technology our medicine is. One only appreciates it once it's needed; up until then, it's just an abstract. I almost convinced myself again in the days leading up to the surgery that I didn't need it, as I had no obvious current symptoms. 

I entered the operating room on my feet. I thought it slightly funny that on the surgical bed, there is a pan built into the bed, and they place your bottom right under it, just in case of unforeseen discharge. I couldn't help but think of convicted inmates being strapped in for lethal injection as they spread my arms out. The mask goes on, oxygen flows, and you smell alcohol as it flushes your veins. The doctor says, "See you in recovery, " and instantly, from my perspective, I am awake again. 

Now, we are waiting for normal bodily functions to return and, more importantly, for the biopsy results.

My daughter has won the boyfriend lottery. He is a saint, and I almost feel like asking him to marry her because I no longer have time to wait. I want a grandchild, I realize now. I keep this to myself, of course.

My son has been working for our family business, and I have no choice but to pressure him to get the credentials I never needed. He has no time to wait or waste. I loath myself for wanting him to run a business, which has been difficult, but he was working at a grocery store and majoring in video games instead of college, so I decided this may be the best opportunity for him. 

Now, as I wait for the word on whether I have cancer or not, I can't really sleep. I hover in a twilight where short dreams come. I am a ghost in one of these, looking in on my daughter. I felt that when my father died, I thought that he came to look in on me. I was in a financial crunch at the time. I felt him say, "You've got this. " And, I did have it. Ten years later, I am well known and respected for what I do in San Diego, reasonably well paid, and my life feels stable ( current political shitshow aside ).

The waiting sucks.

There has been a lot of time to think about the life I've been living. Some parts have been really hard, but in retrospect, I wouldn't change much. The complex parts make the good parts more meaningful. There has also been a lot of time to take inventory of my beliefs and evaluate my relationships. I cannot wait to be better to my friends and loved ones; this starts now. Not that I was terrible; I was just a tad harsh. I had to survive a rough childhood, and it left me with an edge and a tendacy to be overly quick to anger sometimes. My feeble attempts to apologize were usually met with acceptance and statements of love. Maybe I wasn't the shithead I had long thought of myself to be. Nobody wants me to die, despite that grim internal voice that suggests they be better off with the life insurance money, instead of me. My wife wants her husband, my kids, their dad. My employees wish for their boss, and my bandmates want me back on guitar before a microphone. Nobody, it seems, is encouraging me to ride the disease to the grave, as my own grim internal voice sometimes suggests.

Death can wait.

Night Shift

I can't help but think of ghosts, as I make more of the steps that make up the long stretch between rest stops on the very dark climbers trail up to El Cajon Mountain.

More than a few people have died on this rocky hill. Most were hikers. One rock climber on the face we are hiking to decided to climb without a rope. He fell and nearly took out roped climbers, perhaps turning them also into ghosts as he bounced foolishly into the shrubs at the base of the five-hundred-foot cliff. Most San Diegans don't know about the cliffs of El Cajon Mountain, but they do refer erroneously to the mountain as El Capitan

 I think about that ropeless climber as we hike.

 The summer air is still and hot at night. The full moon is not yet out, but the bugs are. Dogs on sentry duty at some of the houses far below know we are up here and yell at us: " Yark! Yark! " I don't mind that so much. Getting shot at is not so fun, and it happens. Near the bottom of the mountain is an old rock quarry that sits above the dam and reservoir. Climbers use the crumbling, overhanging rock face to practice the skills needed to sleep on the giant walls in Yosemite. It may or may not be the homeowners below the quarry that shots. Still, I personally have been sleeping on that wall, and bullets have impacted it not far from my hanging tent. Some locals don't like the rock climbers. Listening to the persistent alerting dog, I feel sympathy. El Cajon Mountain has a long history in San Diego of epics and tragedies. It features its most strenuous hike and spectacular modern rock climbing. It's highly crowded during the cool season, even on many weekdays, so we climb at night.

It is possible to climb the El Cajon Mountains infamous rock face during the summer months in daylight hours, but you must do so at the crack of dawn, as by afternoon, the rock will be hot to the touch and impossible to climb. During the day, the 2-hour hike up to the rock face is deserted during the summer months; the trail is steep, the rattlesnakes are plenty, and heat exhaustion has taken out more than a few experienced hikers. At night, the rock is still warm, but the temperatures are pleasant, and there are no other foolhardy people up there to share the popular routes that would otherwise see a line queued up waiting for their turn to climb. My friend is stopped on the trail ahead, so I turn off my headlight. In the bushes with no moon, it is pitch black. I am fairly sure I hear footsteps off the trail. I know the mountain lions are here. I turn on my flashlight and am relieved to see no glowing eyes as I shine it around me in a circle. I turn the light back off, wondering if the footsteps are in my imagination. I hear my friend Mike smoking in the dark as he waits for me. I think of ghosts again. There is a different way to get up to the rock face over by the park. If you go that way, you walk by the ruins of an old miners' Homestead, where some remains of the belongings of the person who lived there still lay, including an old rusted typewriter and a decrepit motorcycle that will never run again. Who were they? Could it be their ghost I hear walking on the trail behind me? I start walking along the path again. Mike is waiting for me. He has to do that more these days, as I have fourteen years of living ahead of him. I think about being a ghost someday. I'm in no hurry for that, even though rock climbing is a sport with a memorial section in the magazines honoring my peers who fall. I call the hike up to the rock face " The Golden Staircase " because the second half of the trail is as steep as a set of stairs, and the boulders along the trail are gold and brown in color. If you are trying to make good time, it's a 1.5-hour hike in daylight. At night, it's closer to three hours before we get to the start of the route named Meteor. The moon begins to rise as we rack the climbing gear and start climbing up. We think the Meteor gets its name because it is very steep and you climb straight up. One morning, I was driving along the 8 freeway heading east. I glanced over to the left where El Cajon mountain rises, and I saw that when the sun first rises, the stunning outside corner of the upper part of the climb catches the first morning light, and it lights up like the streak of a meteor in the sky. We see no meteors or shooting stars in the sky tonight as the moon rises, casting our shadows on the granite face. I am climbing up first, clipping the bolts and setting the rope through the anchors.

My right hand grips a thin edge the width of a pencil, and my left hand is feeling around above me, looking for the next move. I am reading g the rock with my fingers like a blind man reading  braille. I don't look up much, just enough to see my headlamp shine on the next safety bolt. I keep my attention on my feet, feeling gravity edge them off my stance one millimeter at a time. Each move higher as difficult as the last, some of the holds feel like I turn over a miniature hour glass, the tick-tocking of a timer clock, because I must move fast or tire and slip.

I know Mike can only see a bobbing headlight above him, nothing of my confidence or fear. Climbers talk to each other: " You got me Mike? " I ask, my voice echoes off the walls of the canyon. " I got you, " he says in the darkness one hundred feet below me now.

I pause at the shelf halfway up the first pitch and take pictures of the city lights below. I hum the Cat Stevens song " Moonshadow " as I finish the first pitch. Mike quickly follows up on the long first section, his headlight throwing conflicting shadows on the wall. We pause at the ledge before the upper corner and share a smoke break and the view. Far below now, the dogs are still barking. Mike starts up his section, and the moon is now so bright that we can almost turn off our headlamps, but we don't. Things feel more serious when we rock climb at night, and perhaps it is. We talk to each other more, both words of encouragement and caution. When he tops out on the false summit of Meteor, he pulls the rope up, and I follow as quickly as I can. Near the top of the face, there is a breeze. The air is no longer stale and now has the fresh feel of the coast. At the top of the climb is a perfectly flat shelf, just big enough for two or three people to sit on. We feel lucky to be here. The 125 freeway is far below and to the south, curving through the lights on its way to the hills that border Mexico. From up here, we can see it all and the darker space of the ocean beyond. To get off, we have to slide down our ropes past an overhang that has you hanging in space twenty feet from the wall and a hundred and fifty feet above the base. This part of climbing is the most dangerous, aside from the drive to get to the cliffs. One mistake would lead to a fast plunge into the darkness. I think again of the ghosts as I start down the trail. It's now 4 a.m., and only we and the dogs are awake. We are treated to the sight of Starlink as we near the car, like an interstellar freight train.

Strip Mining for Gravel

The Vulcan Corporation is a giant company that operates many types of businesses that produce goods extracted from the Earth. It's a long established good old boys club that lists its products and its green policies proudly on their websites. Like a giant octopus, the camoflage it uses is well developed. There is an inky screen it uses to escape most attention and danger. It has many tentacles and is ruthless in pursuit of its prey.

California is well known as a state that is hard to do business in. It is common to hear companies complain of the difficulties of regulations and permits required to operate businesses. Especially ones that product dust and leave pollution in the ground water. Mining is expensive in terms of permits and insurance. 

It's been said that there is no such thing as an honest business man: they will reluctantly be honest about the profits and methods they use, as the risk of both the competetion and the tax collector are ever present.  Its good business to minimize taxation and permit costs.

In a state that is allegedly overly active about regulations, the truth is that there are key things in the supply chain that are not regulated at all. Homeowners sometimes find out after they buy a house with a clean inspection report that the roof leaks. They investigate and quickly find out that there are no standards or licensing requirements for home inspections in California. This allows real estate agents to conduct their business with reports from " inspections " that serve nothing more than to facilitate the transaction. The transaction is always the imperitive for both businessmen and tax collectors.

Companies like The Vulcan Corporation have their similar exploitation. They do not pay their far share of taxes nor pull permits for what is likely their most profitable byproduct because it is completely unregulated.

The lack of regulation and proper oversight is circumstantial evidence that somewhere along the lines the wheels are being greased.

Gold and other metals are sluiced out of these gravel beds: in every single known location where historic gold mining happened the Vulcan Corporation has set up massive " aggregate  plants " that process millions of tons of gravel that is sold at a profit.

Completely undeclared and undocumented is the products these operations yield as a byproduct. 

Truckloads of gold, literally, taken illegally out of them thar hills. There is more gold in the ground that was left behind then was ever pulled out by the old time prospectors, and there is no way this Corporation would get permits to operate a strip mine at the mouth of the Azusa Canyon that produced gold.

But innocent gravel used for building and road purposes? that's easily permitable.

They are able to get started in areas favorable to the underlying goal, which is the unregulated and unregistered processing of byproduct.

" I knew of a man in the San Joaquin Valley of California (near Fresno) who set up equipment in several gravel pits up and down the valley from Sacramento southward. He would place large washer boxes in the existing gravel classifying equipment and catch the fine gold as the river rocks and gravel moved through the system. I understand he would find 20 to 50 ounces a month depending on the location and output of the gravel pit. I know from first hand experience that most of the sand and gravel pits in this area of California do their own recovery of fine gold, and many make as much on the gold as they do on the sand and gravel. "

Many of the locations in San Diego and elsewhere they operate are not involved in any obvious way with this massive scheme. They are callous in the apparent disregard for complaints from townspeople nearby about dust and noise, but otherwise operate large settling ponds and processing pits in unsuspecting areas like Black Mountain in San Diego, near the 15 and 56 without much notice.

Other areas, the plunder is much more brazen. Like the area around Fish Canyon at the mouth of Azuza canyon where they are grotesqely strip mining the hillside and using these ill gotten gains to, one can speculate, bribe the right hands at the right intervales to keep this organized scheme off the radar of most of the residents.

One can find many links to now deleted web pages about court battles and town meetings regarding this area. The company does all this, claiming to be producing building materials, but the real cash cow is the byproduct of the areas they work in. The residents complaining about dust, noise from blasting and loss of access to hiking trails

 

Information about the tin and copper deposits around Vulcan Corps Corona California " aggregate " plant.

https://thediggings.com/mines/18678

San Diego lawsuits:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/106/1010/2510758/

Gravel prospecting: https://www.treasurenet.com/threads/prospecting-in-gravel-pits.33577/

The Big Wet One

 "The Big Wet One "

Many San Diego homeowners and property owners are battling with storms and flood water and the associated moisture and mold issues that come with them. This fight is not just contained to the recent storms that brought national attention to our city; it is a war of attrition. Like a Trojan Horse, the rain was welcomed. But now the infiltration is near complete, and people realize there is "water, water everywhere. "

The real troubles may lie directly ahead. 

https://www.aonedge.com/Resource-Center/Blog/California-Great-Flood-of-1862

In this age of social pitfalls, where stating the wrong opinion about viral ideas and "settled science "can have one blacklisted, stalked, harassed, and generally regretful about ever bringing up the notion that there might be bigger wheels turning, the casual heresy of talking about weather calamities as being natural and cyclical is rife with concern. So, for argument, let's suspend disbelief and accept this presentation as an allegation of real people and events. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. There is no need for torches and canceling; we can all agree that people have a direct cause and effect on our climate and that pollution is terrible.

Recent storms in San Diego flooded homes and businesses. That is news. 

Why this is happening is not news because it's not easily understood.

San Diego has experienced several years of above-average rain. Before the hurricane last year, the previous rainfall of 2022-2023 shattered records and seemed relentless. My rain gauge outside my East County home measured over forty inches of rain, far exceeding what was reported. Some may recall that on Friday in 2019, over four inches of rain fell in San Diego, beyond the January storm that made news as the largest on record in 100 years. 

What is this? Fake news? Lazy reporting? A scramble to be first to print?

Loudly absent in the cacophony of news anchor voices shouting about "atmospheric rivers "and "accelerating man-made climate change "is any sensible reference to history. 

Looking at history, using various sources and historical data, the reality is that current weather patterns over the last several years mirror the weather patterns of 1862, which destroyed 25% of the inhabited real estate in California, forced our state capital to be moved fifty miles away to higher ground and killed thousands of people.

If the pattern repeats its complete previous cycle, it will be the greatest natural disaster in our nation's history. Imagine the 8 freeway in Mission Valley under ten feet of water.

"Water is coming out of our floors. "

San Diego is at an intersectionality proving painful and costly to many homeowners. Imagine your roof is not leaking, but the carpets and baseboards around the living room are wet. Your home is on a slab.

The process is common for homeowners. They call a fire and flood company, who comes in and usually removes the floor and bottom two feet of drywall, stripping the home down to its bones in the area affected. These companies set up fans and dehumidifiers, and the homeowners are told to seek a remedy through a plumber or drainage specialist. 

All of this happens with the real suggestion that lack of action can cause mold to set in. Still, it's a whirlwind, and the terrified homeowner is now locked into costly rentals and reconstruction. The hapless homeowner pays a leak detection company to find that there is no leak. They then turn to the internet, looking for a drain company. Plumbers and gardeners are usually whom the oracles at Google send the homeowners to, and some of these companies, or people, may see an opportunity to take money from the victim's hands, turn it into food, and put it in their mouths, so they give a price to fix the problem, often times having no previous experience whatsoever.

The homeowner may spend thousands on said work. Then it rains, and they sometimes find their situation worse because gardening and plumbing aren't drainages. Drainage done incorrectly can redirect and concentrate the water, worsening the problem.

The money pits and traps for the homeowners are more intense for San Diego homes with a crawlspace. People don't associate basements in homes in San Diego. Still, there are literally hundreds of basements in cities like La Mesa, Vista and La Jolla, in areas built into hillsides that are currently seeping water into the living spaces.

The confluence of aging homes, poorly designed or non-existent city planning, and lack of experience with waterproofing homes by local contractors is now a multi-billion dollar problem for San Diego property owners. Some cities like La Mesa and Encinitas have zero civil engineering, i.e., plans for drainage and parking, because the houses are built on what was once farms, and the city incorporations came later. It is not uncommon for homeowners in these areas to find out that they are in a flood zone or that large storm drains on their properties are older than the city they live in. When they fail, the homeowners may be able to file a claim with their insurance company but are otherwise on their own.

They then have to go through a process of trial and error with contractors to find a fix.

The multi-billion dollar flood and reconstruction problem is a gasping canary in the coal mine, warning of lousy air ahead. 

This recent storm brought much more severe localized flooding than the storms of the last few years, which added up to more rain. It wasn't just a  single record rain day that caused these floods, because we have had those and have not flooded to the same extent. Why the storm was measurably worse in property destruction because all the soil was already saturated from the previous year's rains, and not only could the soil not absorb any more rain, but the hydrostatic pressure from the water table was pushing the groundwater up so that some areas and neighborhoods in Clairmont made news last spring because they were literally flooding with groundwater.

Areas without the obvious crisis-level flows requiring cities to set up pump stations are experiencing this same hydrostatic pressure. Rainwater aggressively pushes its way out of the soil, into the footings and crawlspaces, up through the concrete slabs, and into the walls. This can cause anything from wet carpets to rendering the homes literally uninhabitable because of mold. 

Why does one San Diego home get mold, and the next just gets a wet patio after the rain?

It seems to be luck. Homes that have more rocky soil tend to have fewer issues. Areas of high clay ( see 90% of San Diego ) have more costly problems.

The recent storms brought localized calamities that were entirely preventable. From clogged rain gutters pulling them off the homes and clogged landscape drains to blown-out sump pumps never maintained since installation, the worst case I heard of was an Encinitas homeowner who had the intersectionality of trash cans in the curb pushing a deluge out of the gutter, a clogged street storm drain, and her garage set below street level. She watched haplessly as the water roared through her home with enough force to rearrange the furniture. 

Historical Patterns & The Looming Disaster.

Now, our soils are at peak saturation, and another "atmospheric river "is said to be coming. 

It's easy enough to research and pick from various sources. I like dry facts and plain numbers without the faintest trace of politics. I understand that politics is like art in that some people see it as offensive, whereas others might find bias or spin beautiful.

A crusty old professor on YouTube named Leon Hunsaker has a video called "The Legendary Floods of 1861 & 1962 "that presents the measurable records and describes what will happen, to some extent, to a modern California should the pattern repeat.

Imagine every dam in the state overflowing and the rivers flowing at four times flood level. Imagine around one million submerged homes around the states and map-changing mudslides.

The Great Flood of California occurred after several years of above-average rain, similar to what we are experiencing now. In 1862, with the ground wholly saturated from previous rains, a subsequent and more enormous storm dumped over ten feet of rain. 

This storm was so massive that Big Bear mining communities were under thirty feet of snow, and some people were trapped for six months. Then, spring came. The enormous snowpack met with a heat wave, and the floods raged for weeks when they melted rapidly.

People lost their lives by the thousands, and entire communities were washed away. 

This was before the vast floodplain of the Central Valley was populated, before Mission Valley was built, and its floodwaters were long forgotten.

If this same combination of events happens, and we get the now overdue arc storm in the next year or two ( it could actually still happen this year ), the headlines will be screaming about man-made climate disaster, but the real story is lack of civil planning and engineering and a state that was parceled out by land speculators who ruthlessly marketed some small towns like Joshua Tree as a tropical paradise. Literally, charlatans would stick oranges to the spines of a Joshua Tree, take a photo, and market it to speculators back east as land with fruit orchards.

The book Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner describes these wild marketing gimmicks and how Los Angeles was sold and built before any water plan was made, creating aging curiosities like the California aqueduct ( where thousands of miles of open canals allow millions of gallons of water to evaporate from The Colorado River ) and The Owens River project, which supplied water and power to Los Angeles.

In recent years, municipal water departments have lamented leaky irrigation. Our culture was sold on green grass and tropical plants, and many are just stuck there, even though they are wrong for our environment ( related to the general lack of civic planning and engineering ). 

It's related because right now, all over San Diego, people are running their irrigation and over-watering saturated soil that can barely breathe ` because it is wet clay.

The intersectionality of cleptomatic state politicians, historical shysterism of land speculators, aging homes, bad construction standards and practices, and current weather events are a significant headache for many San Diegans. 

Headaches and nuisances are far different from tragedies. A flooded home is a nuisance, but large-scale loss of life and property is a tragedy.

That people in positions of power will exploit and benefit from the tragedy is a guarantee almost as certain as the looming disaster our state faces. They don't want any of us to type "The Great Flood Of California "into a search engine because it would make us wonder why they haven't done anything to prepare for the obvious, and it would knock the wind out of their gasbags when they try to assign blame to man-made climate change, which is natural of course, settled science and all but verboten to talk about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert