January 25th, 2012 | Author:
Ralph
Who hid the road?
The rain has stopped here in the idyllic Sierra foothills. This is the first rain of the rainy season, nearly two months late. In California if it don’t rain during the winter then it just don’t rain at all because it never rains in the Summer. Down in LA, rain is irrelevant or worse, a damn nuisance because it just floods the gutters and runs into the ocean after washing the oil residue off the roads and causing chaos on the freeways. The water is all imported from elsewhere. It’s a convenient arrangement.
California Aqeduct
In the hinterlands of Northern California its different. The rivers run all year round and until recently nobody metered water service. It was all you can use for a flat monthly fee. Folks up here are resentful of Southern California who, they think, want to steal their water. (One of the three SoCal aqueducts takes water from the north to the south). More than anything else, water divides California. Periodically proposals surface to divide California into two more homogenous states but they always founder. Northerners want to cut all ties to the south and stop sending precious water south but unfortunately for them Southerners have more population. There are so many more Southerners that a single California state will always provide water to the south no matter what kind of fuss the north puts up.
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Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness
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November 13th, 2011 | Author:
Ralph
I honor Veterans 364 days a year
So today I feel like I’m channeling Bob as I bristle with outrage but I don’t know what this country is coming to when an elected city official chooses not to even pretend a respect for our veterans. The Mayor of Richmond California doesn’t even hesitate about choosing a protest rally over a memorial ceremony on Veteran’s Day. Sure Veteran’s Day Memorials are not very exciting events with their patriotic music, lots of old geezers and politicians mouthing platitudes but that’s why we have the holiday. Maybe she just wanted to sleep in.
But she didn’t just stay home and sleep in. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin attended the Occupy Richmond Protest Rally instead. It is no big deal,the mayor says because she honors veterans on the other 364 days a year .She is apparently so worn out honoring veterans that she needs a break . Besides, she points out, the Occupy Richmond Protest will celebrate veteran Scott Olson who was injured at a recent Occupy Oakland Rally. So she is killing two birds with one stone, celebrating veterans and anarchy at the same time.
So where is Richmond California?
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Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness
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November 06th, 2011 | Author:
Ralph
What’s your image of San Francisco?
Forbidden pleasures? Anything goes? The BART tunnel under the bay? Alcatraz? Hordes of smelly homeless people?
SF has a well deserved reputation.
It is stunning visually with graceful towers rising out of the bay and a unique cable car experience to get visitors up and down the steep hills. Then there are the great restaurants catering to every budget and taste. It’s also the place were individual liberty is indulged, protected and encouraged from the homeless people clamoring for change on market street to the gay lovers holding hands in the Castro. San Francisco is the place where anything goes without even a pretense of old fashioned conservative values. Los Angeles is often satirized as the home of the fruits and nuts but LA is more like your grandmother while San Francisco is a high priced slut.
San Francisco is a great place to visit because you can pretend that you are crossing the line while remaining perfectly safe. All that tantalizing and questionable living going on right under your nose but you can enjoy it vicariously without risk. When in LA you quickly penetrate the facade of glamor and sin and discover that underneath you find a lifestyle that wouldn’t be out of place in Des Moines. Not so, San Francisco. Wherever you scratch the surface in San Francisco you find life that is bohemian at its best and downright otherworldly at its worst. more…
Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness
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