Goodbye to El Nino?

   I was raining yesterday morning.

   Or, it was finishing up raining.  It started raining the previous  afternoon and rained much of the night.  The rain was supposed to done byby noon.  Which is what happened.  Which is good, because I was going out in the afternoon, and faithful readers will know that, for me in my wheelchair, rain is more than an inconvenience. 

   At the same time, this rain was a good thing.  And it was kind of big news, even in February, here in Southern California.  Before the rain came, we had a 5-day heat wave, with temperatures in the high eighties.  And it hadn’t rained all month. 

   Yes, I was going around in my short overalls with no shirt.  Even after 5. In February.  Something was wrong, very wrong.  I was complaining, even as I was glad it wasn’t raining.  And I could hear my friend John in Vermont laughing at my whining, as he and his fellow Easterners experienced record sub-zero temperatures while we had our glorious hot weather here earlier this week. 

   It will supposedly heat up again this weekend, but it really should be raining.  Not just because it’s winter and February.  We are having a big El Nino here, and it’s supposed to bring a lot of rain. 

   So is this El Nino a bust?  They keep saying the big rains are coming and may last into May, but I don’t know.  However, like my dreading rain and not wanting it to be hot and dry, the situation is more nuanced than that, as I mused over in my Claremont Courier column earlier this month. 

           WATCHING AND WAITING FOR THE RAIN AND THE DRAMA

   It came right on time.  Like clockwork. 

   Not only that, but the rain waited until we were ready.  Or at least until it wasn’t too much of a damper. 

   It didn’t come on New Year’s Day.  The sky was left picture-perfect clear for the Rose Parade, just as it should be and everyone, the whole world, expects.  And it waited another two days, giving us blue skies for the last weekend of the holidays. 

   The rain came on that Monday, the first Monday in January, right when the holidays were over and most of us were back to business as usual. It was here. Indeed, rain was going to be business as usual. 

   El Nino was here, just as we had been told it would be.  All the reports said that we would be getting a remarkable amount of rain with the unique weather system this winter.  It would bring some relief, if not complete relief, to the state’s troubling four-year drought.  It would also bring problems, like flooding.  And it would most likely come in January, not December, when, as was explained, the rain we got was “normal” rain, not El Nino rain.

   Well, it was January, and El Nino was here. The first workweek of the month included several days of rain – unusual for this area, at least in recent years.  There were also all the news stories, about flooded road and freeways, about feet of snow in the local mountains, about the efforts to get homeless people out of the rain.

   There were articles about how to prepare for a lot of rain, and one article mentioned the two Pomona College students who were killed when a big tree fell on them on College Avenue during the last big El Nino in 1998. And Steve Lopez had a column on the front page of the Los Angeles Times on the day after the first day of rain about a homeless man who had a bed set up, complete with box-springs and a comforter, along with a dining area with a small Christmas tree, under a freeway, only to see it all float away when a downpour came.  After refusing an offer of lunch, the man was proudly serving up burritos to the columnist when the water came. 

   El Nino was here, with all its promise and danger, with all its drama, just liked it was predicted. 

   And then it wasn’t. 

   When it looked like it would rain the next Saturday during the dedication celebration for the new Claremont Lincoln University Community Performance Stage and the renovated Shelton Park in the Village, I thought we caught a lucky break when it didn’t.  I thought it was just fortunate that there was a break in the rain that day or weekend. 

   Except it wasn’t a break. It was, it turned out, the way it was. 

   That was it for all the rain.  Other than a day of rain to close out the month and a brief shower and some sprinkling now and then, the storms stopped after that first week of January.  And the storms during that week really weren’t, in general, that dramatic and extraordinary. 

   So much for El Nino. 

   Or was it?  Is it? 

   Did we get lucky and escape the ravages of a monster El Nino?  Were we safe from giant sinkholes and from random trees falling on us?  Look, we didn’t have to deal with extreme weather, like the folks on the East coast who had two feet of snow in one weekend, when New York City got just .2 inches less than the largest amount of snow that it ever got in a storm, which was almost a century ago. Not to mention the gorgeous, clear days, complete with snow-capped mountains as a backdrop, that we’ve been having. 

   But did this also mean that we are also in for another dry year, a fifth year of drought?  Did it mean another year of cutting back on water, another year of brown lawns and dying trees and wondering if fountains and swimming pools are cool?

   Not necessarily.  At least, that what we keep being told. 

   Appearantly, we haven’t escaped the ravages of El Nino, and we still may have to live with drought conditions. 

   For one thing, we are told that the biggest part of El Nino is yet to come.  Just as it was explained that the rain in December was normal and that El Nino most likely wouldn’t hit until January, the explanation now is that it won’t really hit until February and could even last into April or May. 

   When it was discovered last year that a big El Nino was on tap for this Winter, we were cautioned that it wouldn’t end the drought.  We were told that ending the drought would take an unprecedented or maybe impossible amount of rain.  It was almost enough to make us think that this big El Nino is no big deal. 

   It was also explained at the time that the El Nino rains would hit us here in Southern California and probably wouldn’t reach Northern California and that, even if they did, because it involves a warming, there wouldn’t be much snow.  Snow, it was explained, is what’s critical in ending the drought, since it melts off slowly, allowing the water to be more easily captured and not just drained into the ocean. In an average year, melting snowpack provides roughly a third of the water used by California cities and farms. 

   Now, something different has been happening.  At least it was happening last month.  The El Nino rains, with all their drama, have been hitting up north. In Pacifica, south of San Francisco, cliffs have been eroded by pounding surf, and people here been evaluated from apartments? Or have those rains been the usual storms from Alaska – just more than usual?  In any case, most of the storms have been “wrung out” by the time they reach us. What’s more, there has been plenty of snow – more than usual. Even with the storms here only during the first week of January, there has been more snow on Mt. Baldy than we’ve seen in more than a year.  There have been articles about the unusual snow here and people flocking to it. 

   But whether all the rain up north and all the snow is from El Nino or not, is it enough? Yes, there has been a higher-than-usual amount of snow so far – the deepest in five years - but we keep being told that April 1 is the critical date, that it all depends on how much snow there is on the state’s mountains – mainly up north - on that day. In some places, there is 115% of the normal amount of snow, but it is said that the average amount needs to be 150%. And as a recent Los Angeles Times article pointed out in what is getting to be a refrain, “Water levels in the state’s reservoirs have risen since December 1, but storage is still far below historical averages.”

   That goes right along nicely with the other now-all-too-familiar refrains in the same article: “a modest yet encouraging milestone in a period of extended drought” and “it is too early to determine whether winter rains will be enough to make any major dent in California’s drought.”

   Is this all good news, or is it bad news?  Maybe we should take whatever rain we get and make it better news.  That is, until it gets to be worst news.

Not much to stand on

   My footrest broke off. 

   The other day, I was at my computer, typing, just like I am now, when I wanted to sit back farther in my chair, as I often do.  I pressed my feet down on my footrests, like I always do, to raise my butt up and back, and there was a snap, and the left pedal wasn’t there.  It was something like a glass breaking in your hand or, as I imagine would be more the case, a step breaking when you put your foot on it. 

   I had another footrest that I had put on while waiting for the pedal to be put back on, but now I’m afraid to press down on the footrests.  The trouble is that I have to, and I do it all the time, to adjust myself in my chair.  And this isn’t the first time this has happened. 

   By far the majority of problems I’ve had with my power wheelchair in recent years have been with the footrests – usually with the petals snapping off.  It is sort of a hot mess.  The crazy thing is that these footrests cost about $600 for the pair – that’s right, $300 for a footrest.  What’s crazier is that the footrests I now have, including the one that broke, is a mismatched pair the vendor gave me when the new ones took forever to come from the factory.  And it’s still unclear if the $600 was still charged. 

   I wonder how much will be charged to repair the petal.  Or if I will be given, at last, the new footrests. 

   I can rant about the vendor and how I would go to another one, except that most other wheelchair vendors I’ve gone to and seen are even more of a scam. These places know they have a niche market, a captive market, with no competition to speak of and with many products and services paid for by the state. But the real problem is that the footrests are bad.  Yes, I’m tough on footrests – I literally stand on them when I adjust myself in my chair – but is that my fault, my problem?  It shouldn’t be.    

   I love Quickie power wheelchairs.  They are the best.  I have been using Quickie power chairs for about 25 years, and I’ve had fewer mechanical problems with them.  My other power chairs were always having mechanical problems.  They would break down constantly, leaving my stranded.  Yes, I’m tough on my power chair, driving miles every day (the odometer on my chair now says I’ve gone 2350.8 miles in a bit more than two years), but Quickie power chairs are tough, like I am.

   But their footrests are crap.  I’m sorry to say this, but they are.  They are cheap (even at $600 a pair!).  It is like Quickie made their chair(s) and realized they forgot about the footrests and tacked some on. 

   Just saying.   

Anything but the best?

   Poor Martin O’Malley. He was all but ignored in Sunday evening’s Democratic presidential primary debate, with the moderators addressing question after question to the red-hot front-runners, Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  The Maryland governor was pretty much left saying “But what about me?” while no doubt many viewers asked, “Who is that guy?” Indeed, he would have been relegated to the second-tier debate for low-polling candidates, as in the Republican contest, except he would have nobody to debate (although, as I was reminded by an article in today’s L.A Times, there are many Democratic and Republican presidential candidates we don’t hear about). 

   This really is too bad – not only for O’Malley but also for the rest of us Democrats left with a shaky slate just over a week before the primary races begin. 

   Don’t get me wrong.  I am all for Sanders.  I love his vow to fight the big-money powers that be and for truly universal healthcare and college.  I am all for his socialistic ideals, standing up for the rest of us.  I feel the Bern.

   But can this self-avowed Socialist win in November?  Really?  When I went to a political forum a few years ago in Claremont, a well-respected scholar in this relatively progressive community was loudly booed when he tried to say that Socialism was perhaps worth pursuing. 

   Maybe things have changed since then, but I’m not seeing it.  Sanders talks about revolution, and it would really take a revolution for him to win the presidency.  I’m sorry to say that those of us who do these sorts of revolutions don’t have a good track record.  Look at Occupy Wall Street.  Occupy what? you ask.  Exactly. 

   November isn’t that far off.  And I don’t see a lot of college students, other than the usual scrubbed-face die-hards with their researched noon speeches, getting fired up over an old man, even a fiery,  radical one, like they did over voting for the first black president.  I would love to be proven wrong on this.  Another thing – and this is a big thing these days – is that Sanders looks like a deer in the headlights when the topic is foreign policy.  (Yes, Donald Trump doesn’t know much about foreign policy, but he certainly doesn’t look like a deer in the headlights when spouting off about it – not that this is a good thing, but it certainly has been effective.)

   And then there’s Hilary.  She may be so hot that we’re on a first-name basis with her, but I’m concerned about us getting dragged down by all her baggage, at least until November, if not afterwards.  I’m not just talking about the e-mails, whether she can be trusted, Bill’s womanizing, the dynasty factor, blah, blah, blah. Wasn’t Hilary so exhausted after her time as Secretary as State that she hid out for months, not sure at all about returning to public service? Will she be up for another four or eight years most likely to be even more grueling, all the more so in these bitterly partisian times? What about Bill, with his well-known heart problems?  What if he has a heart attack and dies while Hilary is in office?  It will already be tricky having (former president) Bill Clinton as our first First Gentleman. 

   Maybe this is just so much late-night obsessing – again, I’d love to be proven wrong.  O’Malley may or may not be the ideal candidate.  I’m just saying it’s too bad he was never given a chance and we now don’t get much of a choice.  We need all the choices, viable choices, we can get, especially when the opposition is so passionate and behaving in such an extremist and volatile way.

Shelter in a (and another and another) storm

   “Seeing that he was okay, she went on her way.  Soon after, the running water had crashed the curb and began spilling across the sidewalk and into Lopez’s encampment.”

   It has been raining a lot.  At least for Southern California.  (My friend visiting from Vermont chuckled over how people here are alarmed about the inclement weather.) So far, so good – the great El Nino, with its promise of much-needed precipitation, appears to be panning out and like clockwork, with these first big storms coming in early January.

   One recent morning, I went on my weekly marketing trip.  It was raining a bit, more like a heavy sprinkling.  Nothing like the downpour that I looked out my living room windows at a few hours later, lasting much of the afternoon. I was lucky. 

   Yes, I am lucky.  Not only did I get out when the rain wasn’t too bad, I have a nice living room from which I can watch the rain, whether it’s a heavy sprinkle or a drenching downpour. 

   At least, I’m not like Felipe Flores Lopez, who Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote about during the first week of El Nino storms.  The columnist visited Mr. Lopez after a nun e-mailed him about the homeless man’s set-up under a bridge: “Hi, I photographed this fellow. His little ‘home’ is unbelievable.  Attached are photos.”

   One can raise questions, as I certainly can, about whether this is romanticizing homelessness, and this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it.  In any case, Mr.  Lopez did have quite a set-up, complete with table and chairs, cupboards and a double bed with a box spring and mattress and a clean white comforter. On top of his dresser sat a little Christmas tree with red decorations. 

   It was quite a set-up, except when it wasn’t, except when, during the columnist’s visit, the rain came and washed it all away.  There is a dramatic photograph accompanying the column of Mr.  Lopez climbing atop his bed, trying to keep it from floating away.

   In a sense, Mr. Lopez was/is lucky.  He was crafty and scrappy enough to put together “his little ‘home.’” And he told the columnist that he knew a place where he could build a new camp that wouldn’t get washed out.   But he is only one of 44,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. 

   It is said that this is the capitol of homelessness, with the country’s most homeless people, largely because of – ironically now – the mild weather.  Many, unlike Mr. Lopez, are mentally ill or disabled, and many have severe substance abuse issues. 

   Also, as discussed in an adjacent news article, many are stubborn and don’t want to leave their encampments, even with dire warnings and threats of flooding, etc. There are numerous reasons for this – they don’t want to lose a pet, they want to keep their possessions where they are, they don’t like the rules and regimen in a shelter, etc.  There is also pride.  When Steve Lopez offered to buy him lunch, Mr.  Lopez not only declined but, “[a]s the rains picked up and the water rose, he whipped up a fine meal or burritos and set glasses of water on the kitchen table.”

   What are we to make of all this?  How do we deal with all these folks living in such a dire, unsafe and unhealthy situation, even as local and state officials scramble and argue and contradict each other over what to do?  After a woman saw Mr.  Lopez get flooded out, she gave him a dry jacket.  But how many of us are like the woman who, before the rain got bad, “[s]eeing that he was OK…went on her way?”

   How many of us go on our way when we see the homeless out on the street? 

   And I am totally against laws against camping, sleeping in public – laws that criminalize homelessness.  But, when all else fails, when push comes to shove, doesn’t being in a jail cell with meals – if such was available - for a night or for a day or two sound better than being left out in a storm?