Shift happens

   One recent morning, I was glad to have the comforter on the bed.  When I woke up, it was a bit nippy.  There was a touch of Autumn in the air. 

   Which was frustrating, because September has always been hot, likely the hottest month overall, here in Claremont.  That is, although it may have cool days with wonderful hints of Fall, some of the year’s hottest days come in September – and not just early in the month. It can also get awfully hot in October. 

   This is hard for someone like me who doesn’t like the heat and looks forward to it cooling off in the Fall after the long hot Summer. For this reason, Fall is my favorite time of year. Although it is terribly politically incorrect, I can understand why they used to call these not-part-of-the-bargain, gypping heat waves in late September and October “Indian Summer.”  

   In fact, when I was growing up, this was “Fair weather” – the beastly hot weather that always came along with the Los Angeles County Fair during September in Pomona nearby.  Also, it was a joke that the Claremont colleges do their hiring in February, when it’s cool and gorgeous, with the palm trees and oranges shining in the sunny skies with snow-capped Mt. Baldy in the background.  The new professors would move here in late August and despair over what they had gotten themselves into.  At that time, there was also the smog which was far worse than it is now. 

   All this is bad enough. At least it wasn’t humid back then.  In recent years, it has gotten humid during the summer, and more and more so.  This summer has been totally crazy.  It rained in July, which would never happen before, and it rained more than two inches a few days ago.  During this downpour, it wasn’t exactly cool, much less cold, and it didn’t provide much relief – the next few days are slated to heat up again.  What is this?  Hawaii?  Miami?  This definitely wasn’t part of the sunny So. Cal. bargain.

   Years ago, a professor here said that it looked like the weather was moving northward.  He thought everything would be shifting north, that we here in Southern California would be getting Mexico’s tropical weather and the San Francisco Bay Area would get our hot weather. This was before talk of global warming, and I don’t know if this is a part of global warming or something else, but he was right.  Last week, when we were sweltering in the hundreds and humidity – yes, it was horrid! -  it was in the nineties in San Francisco. Can you imagine?   Ninety in San Francisco,  where at least my grandfather always said you need a coat in the summer.  (Didn’t Mark Twain also say that?) 

Camping fool

   I love traveling, getting out of town and the daily grind and going on adventures, and, for years and years, I have driven by campgrounds in beautiful places like the Central Coast or in the woods and wondered what it’s like to stay there.  I wondered what it was like to go camping like when I was a child and be so close to beautiful nature and not have to leave before it began getting dark.  Well, I’m not wondering anymore. Because now I’m doing it. 

   After two initial attempts last year, I am going on four weekend camping trips this Summer and early Fall – not counting camping at California WorldFest in July at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley – and, so far, it has been pretty terrific overall.

   I am finding out that it is indeed nice to be in a beautiful natural space for more than a few hours and not have to leave when evening is coming. It is nice to sit on a beach, a wild, rocky beach in its most natural state, for as long as I want, knowing that I only have to go a few hundred feet to get to where I’m staying.  I don’t have to worry about getting back into my hot van. I don’t have to think about a long, trafficky drive home, at least for a day or two. 

   But it’s more than being in a beautiful natural space; it’s living in it – not in a hotel or house there – but in the beautiful natural space.  It’s being a part of it, sharing it, having the honor and privilege of being a part of such beauty.  Yes, it gets rough and dirty, and there are bugs and critters (and stinky, usually barely accessible restrooms), and it sometimes gets frightfully windy. But this is part of being part of this beauty and part of the gorgeous sunset and incredibly starry night right there. (But, yes, I do like going home to my big, clean bathroom and a hot shower!)   

   And it is magical to be able to do this in my wheelchair.  I love getting up in this beautiful space, getting into some overalls (usually cut-offs with no shirt) and my boots and meandering off on my own after a good breakfast (and lots of sun-block on me, of course) to discover trails and a nice place to sit for an hour or three.  To me, this is the ultimate in freedom and independence.  It is truly liberating, not only physically but also for my mind and soul. 

   The California State Parks does a fantastic job in enabling me to do just this.  I have been on really cool wheelchair-accessible trails over wetlands and through groves with wildly twisted branches and neon green ponds and also able to get down cliffs to crashing waves on the shore.  Not only is this a great adventure, but I like seeing how people react to seeing me there (it ranges from “oh wow” delight to almost anger that I got in the way of their idyll).

   A word about that good breakfast and other meals.  Another fun thing about camping is cooking on a Coleman stove and what can be cooked on it.  Breakfast has been pancakes or fried eggs, grits and vegan bacon, along with orange juice and coffee. Dinners have included gnocchi from Trader Joes along with bagged fresh organic spinach, spaghetti with marinara sauce and vegan Italian sausage and zucchini,  white hominy and vegetarian chili and cheese along with crookneck squash and Tasty Bite Indian entrees over rice along with broccoli. All have been not hard to make and quite good – and all the better and more enjoyable out-of-doors. 

   I wish I had started doing this years ago. One reason I didn’t is that I thought it would be too difficult, especially for my attendant.  Yes, packing everything and setting up and taking down the equipment is a hassle, but not so much of a hassle. (I sleep on a futon pad in my van – surprisingly comfy – and I have a large tent for my attendants.) Packing carefully and being organized, including keeping the equipment in one place at home, is the trick, and getting a few large plastic tubs (instead of hunting down and using cardboard boxes,  which tended to fall apart) helped – all pretty obvious, I know, but it wasn’t at first. Also, taking things like a tea kettle, a centinella candle, oven mitts and a plastic table cloth makes things much easier and more pleasant, even with it being more to load and unload.  I’m thinking of getting a canopy for shade.

   I had envisioned camping trips as short, cheap getaways, and it’s turning out that that’s exactly what they are.  Not only am I going to place that are a few hours away at most (last month, I thoroughly enjoyed Morro Bay State Park – a bit far at four hours away – and El Capitan State Beach, and I’m looking forward to going to Dogwood Campground near Lake Arrowhead and to Refugio State Beach this month), but the price is right.  Because I’m disabled and have a pass, I pay half price for a campsite.  This means I pay about $40 for a two-night outing.  Plus, I can have up to 8 people staying there.  This sure beats at least $85 a night at a motel, plus going out and paying for restaurant meals, for me and one attendant.  As the Who would say, I call it a bargain! 

Summer breaking

   It has been a full and rich summer, full of adventure and trying new things, as well as taking it easy.  Here’s a taste of what I’ve been up to, as I discussed in a recent Claremont Courier column. (I may not get back to regularly posting until next month.  Or I may start now.  We'll see!  This is what's called covering ass.)

                ON THE ROAD, A NEW WINDOW ON CLAREMONT

  It turned out that Emma was taking us the long way.  What should have been a 17-minute trip ended up taking 45 minutes.  There were an awful lot of right and left turns, coming one right after the other, and we found ourselves driving one the same roads and the same highway several times.  After a while,  Reginald joined in, but he basically gave the same directions. 

   Not to worry, though.  My two friends and I had left early, so we were not late.  Instead of being super early and perhaps rude, we were right on time.  What’s more, all those right turns and left turns were quite lovely, bringing us down quiet roads lined with beautiful trees and charming cottages or through golden fields dotted with livestock and storybook barns.  Each turn was lovelier than the last, and seeing the same roads several times was no problem. 

   Even the highway was attractive, more like a verdant main road rolling over the hills than a state thoroughfare, easy on the eyes during our repeat jaunts on it.  But there was a problem – we were lost.  We had no idea how to get to where we were going and were going around in circles.  It was hard not to panic, especially with the phones and their GPS guides, affectionally dubbed Emma and Reginald – he is a bit more bossy, only giving directions without the street names (“Now turn right.”)– losing their connection or running out of power.

   It turns out, though, that Grass Valley and Nevada City, mashing up almost seamlessly along Highway 49 in the rolling foothills northeast of Sacramento, are an awfully nice place to get lost and go in circles and even panic in.  For the last five or six years, I have been going to Grass Valley in mid-July to attend and camp at a music festival at the Nevada County Fairgrounds. But it has been many more years since I took time to explore these “Gold Country” towns. And, ironically, I saw more of their neighborhoods on this misguided outing. 

   That’s the best thing about trips – the unexpected ventures, when we see things that people don’t usually see, even when they spend time on a visit.  That and meeting people and making new friends.  My friends and I were enjoying both – we were on our way to visit someone I had met a week earlier at a meeting in Marin County.

   It just so happened that my friends and I would be attending the music festival in Grass Valley.  So we would be in his neighborhood or in his neck of the woods, more or less literally, and able to see him before heading back to Claremont via Lake Tahoe and Bishop.  These sorts of unexpected side trips and stops are another bonus in traveling. 

   But another bonus in this side trip was how it provided another view of Claremont.  Yes, this little jaunt, getting lost and driving in circles in Grass Valley and Nevada City, opened a new window into our fair little city for me. 

   It made me appreciate Claremont even more and recognize how fair, how attractive, how beautiful and lovely our little city is.  We always like to say how wonderful and unique Claremont is, but it turns out more and more that that’s more than wishful thinking or civic pride. 

   As I learned not long before this trip and mentioned in my last column, Claremont has been named by TheCultuTrip.com, a travel website, as one of the 10 most beautiful towns on the west coast.  That’s not all, though.  In this list, it is one of four – only four – towns in California, and the other four includes, yes, Nevada City, as well as Cambria and Mendocino. 

   Think about it.  Claremont is seen by at least some to be as fair as fair and charming as these lovely getaway spots.  Is there any one of us who wouldn’t jump at the chance to spend a week, a weekend, even a night in Cambria or Mendocino?  Most of us savor a day spent in one of these idyllic burgs, especially when they’re aren’t so crowded.  The same goes for Nevada City, though it may not be as well-known. 

   So Claremont is now seen, or increasingly seen, as a charming, picaresque town, a getaway spot right up there with Cambria and Mendocino and the beautiful Gold Country. Is this surprising?  Is this a shock? Perhaps.  It certainly got a “wow!” out of me. But maybe it shouldn’t be. 

    After all, my last column – the one in which I mentioned the list on TheCultureTrip.com – was all about how Claremont is like one big park, ideal for a summer afternoon or evening respite. Not only are there an impressive number of city parks, there are the colleges with all their park-like acres.  Even with the fading lawns in this unprecedented summer of drought, they still offer a peaceful escape, complete with their noted trees.  Indeed, Claremont’s trees and urban forest was a major factor in the website’s citation. 

   And indeed, there are plenty of stories about people getting out and enjoying Claremont and its urban forest, not to mention its cultural opportunities and its unique shops and restaurants.  In the same edition of the COURIER, there was not only an article about another new restaurant in town; there was a feature about the Claremont Senior Bicycle Group.  Sponsored by the super-active Claremont Senior Program – yet another stand-out in this community – the group plans and leads regular weekly rides on our pleasant streets. Longer rides further afield are also on the schedule, but, as Angela Bailey points out in the article, “There is no better place to be a cyclist than the City of Trees. With over 30 linear miles of bicycle infrastructure and organizations geared towards all ages and cycling skill levels, Claremont – which has been designated as a bike-friendly city by the League of American Cyclists – is a haven for cyclists.”

   What’s more, it turns out that, with all our trees, this is actually a healthier town. According to a study published in Scientific Reports analyzing two sets of data from Toronto, adding ten trees to a street can make a resident feel seven years younger. Furthermore, the study found also that residents on streets with a higher density of trees are less likely to have cardio-metabolic conditions such as hyper-tension, obesity and diabetes. 

   “Trees remove pollutants from the air, so it could be the cleaner air, or it could be that adding more trees on a street encourages people to get outside and exercise more,” said Marc Berman, director of the Environmental Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago and the senior author of the paper. “Or it could be that  the environment is more beautiful, and that contributes to health.”

   We should be pretty darn healthy here with more than 24,000 trees.  That’s right, there are over 24,000 trees in Claremont, and, in a project carried out by students in Pomona College professor Char Miller’s Environmental Analysis 190 class, they are all “mapped” online.  For information on any of the trees lining Claremont’s streets or in its parks and other public places, visit http://claremontsurbanarboretum.

   I wonder if Nevada City can beat that. 

Hope wins out

   The colleges closed down in May, but, as seen in my recent column in the Claremont Courier, Claremont still has more than its share of interesting people and activity. 

                A HUGE BUILDING FULL OF HOPE

   No, I haven’t seen the Hall of Fame.  I have never been downstairs.  And I didn’t know that Winston Churchill had been there. 

   My friend had returned from using the restroom at Bridges Auditorium, and, although I thought “Wow!” when he told me that a picture of Winston Churchill is among the pictures of those who have appeared on its stage that are on the wall in the basement, I wasn’t surprised.  From the time I grew up here in Claremont, I have heard about famous performers and speakers who have appeared on this stage, and I have enjoyed seeing a good number of them.

   I have always felt, in fact, that it’s too bad that more performers and speakers don’t appear there. It’s a shame that this great theater, the biggest collegiate auditorium on the west coast with something like 2400 seats, doesn’t have performances and presentations (as opposed to graduations and other such semi-private events) every week, if not every evening.  Big Bridges closed for weeks or months,  including during the school year, is a terrible waste. 

   So I was glad to go there a few weeks ago – all the more so with the colleges not in session for the summer – with my friend. We were there to see the Claremont High School production of The Addams Family. 

   It is always a treat to see the big, end-of-the-year, musical production in the big theater, even if I still wish there was live musical accompaniment as in the past. This is big-time stuff – Winston Churchill, after all, was once on this stage - and the hard-working kids, working under the direction of the even harder-working Krista Elhai, deserve it. Once again, they didn’t disappoint. 

   The Addams Family may not be My Fair Lady, and it’s definitely no Carousel, but it is a lot of fun.  Based on the old popular television sitcom, which was inspired by the cartoons of Charles Addams, the musical is about what happens when Wednesday, the daughter in this family of ghouls, falls in love with a “normal” boy, and her parents, Morticia and Gomez, host a get-acquainted dinner for the boy’s parents.  On this simple plot hangs lots of silly puns and gags, including a troupe of zombie dancers, and the students had fun and did their best to let fly with them. 

   Like I said, it was a treat – and an inspiring one – to see these young people doing what they clearly love so well.  Jason Acosta was extra fun in his make-up-laden role as Uncle Fester, who serves as a narrator of sorts while having his own private adventure.  And Xavier Reynoso, playing Wednesday’s younger brat brother Pugsley who loves nothing more than being tortured and miserable, was a pint-sized revelation.  The real treat is that this kid, who my friend said “has chops,” is only a freshman, so we’ll hopefully be seeing much more of him. 

   Yes, hooray for the C.H.S kids and Ms. Elhai once again, but I have to say that, as bright-eyed and brightening they were, they still didn’t prepare me for what I saw a days later.  Not only was there another presentation at Big Bridges, in the quiet (or relatively quiet) month of June, there was Pete Seeger greeting the audience that had gathered and singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” for the occasion. 

   This was on video, of course, but it was nevertheless breath-taking.  I could hear gasps in the audience, as the renowned folk-singer and activist, filmed at his rural home nearly a year and a half ago, explaining that he had been invited but, because of advancing age and decreasing energy, wasn’t sure where he would be at this time.  He died months later, the tape now a whallop-packing reminder that hope and energy live on. 

   This was a message that was most appropriate for this audience that had gathered.  It was a huge, eager audience, almost filling the cavernous hall, and it was gathered for the four-day Tenth International Whitehead Conference, held in conjunction with several other international conferences and including a significant contingent from Asia, with the theme,  “Seizing the Alternative: Towards an Ecological Future.”

  The Seeger video was shown during the first of several free, open-to-the-public plenary sessions held in Big Bridges over the long weekend of numerous presentations and discussions exploring how people from all walks and faiths can work together to fight global warming and develop a sustainable, thriving world community.  There were numerous other greetings, including from Claremont Mayor Corey Calaycay, who confessed to being nervous about speaking in front of such a large audience as he touted Claremont’s efforts in being an ecologically friendly town (including by him and his fellow councilmembers in their own homes and lives). Also featured in this and one other plenary session I attended were the Pilgrim Pickers, Pilgrim Place’s resident string band and perhaps Claremont’s unofficial go-to house band. 

    Following the Seeger video on the first evening, Bill McKibbon, the famed climate change activist, spoke.  While he essentially gave the same talk that he gave when he was here a few years ago, it was an important message: yes, the planet is in dire shape due to warming which we humans have caused – indeed, it could be that it is too late to reverse the effects of the warming – but there is hope in the activism that he has inspired and evident in the weekend’s gathering. 

   This activism, with a diversity of people coming together, is what the conference was all about.  An important aspect, and a key image, was the kick-off to a new organization and website called Pandopolus, bringing together research and information about climate change and the efforts to stop it.  As explained in another plenary session and illustrated in another video, this undertaking is inspired by the Pando, the aspen grove in Utah which is the largest living organism on earth sharing a root system and which is now endangered. 

   It is hoped that these four days in Claremont were the beginning of a movement, a movement based in shared roots and a common passion.  At least that’s how John Cobb, a retired noted theologian and philosopher who lives at Pilgrim Place, sees it.  This conclave, it seemed, was his baby, something of a life-culminating achievement. 

   And, as he explained during extended remarks during the second plenary session, the passion that is shared for caring for our planet is the key.  As Mr.  Cobb outlined, we need to have a new outlook, based more in our hearts and on caring, different from the outlook developed in the 1700’s, when the world came to be seen as a clock, a mechanism to be observed and also used objectively.  When we see the planet as a machine, he maintains, it is too easy not to be concerned when it is used too much or is even breaking down (after all, a machine can always be repaired).

   Putting on a musical takes a lot of passion and working together.  So does saving our planet.  That’s what a great building like Big Bridges is for and why it needs to keep being used. 

   Also, a couple notes:

   With the confederate flag going down and the rainbow flag going up in the aftermath of the massacre at the historic black church in Charleston, S.C, and the Supreme Court declaring that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional, the last two weeks or so have been breath-taking.  While many, including me, are quite pleased, plenty of others are unhappy, to say the least.  Especially in the gay marriage situation, many people, including officials like county clerks who grant marriage licenses, are digging in, fighting back and refusing to go with the plan.  I think that, as with the Supreme Court Brown decision outlawing school segregation, it will take a while – perhaps years - for the whole country to buy in, and, as with the menacing racism in recent years, evidenced most sharply in police killing unarmed black men and boys and the incident in the Charleston church, it certainly won’t mean there will no longer be anti-gay rhetoric and violence. It will be a long, hot summer at least.  I take some hope and comfort in this quote by Juli Luke, the clerk in Denton Countyin Texas who is against same-sex marriage but will issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, because she “took an oath on my family Bible to uphold the law”: “[M]y faith in Christ ensures I have comparison and respect for those who feel differently.”

   Finally, as I did last year, I’ll be taking some time off.  Because I’ll be traveling in the next few weeks, I may or likely won’t post for the rest of this month.  I’ll be back with regular posts sometime in August.