Sylmar Earthquake

I was born in L.A. at a young age (as I like to say) and we lived in Lawndale, California until I was in 3rd grade.  Spending the first 8 years of my life in south-central L.A. meant I got to experience a lot of things.  I don’t remember it being a particularly rough neighborhood, except I do remember a friend of mine got punched in the face because he had a sissy bar on his bike that said, “Sock it to me!”  I tried to warn him :-)

Anyway, one of the cool things about being in Los Angeles was the earthquakes.  You never knew when they were going to hit, but they were pretty fun.  I remember one afternoon in particular.  The water in the fish tank started to slosh and the light above the dining room table started to sway.  We all rushed outside.  Not because we were in danger, we just did.  What I saw next was so cool.  As I looked down the street, it looked like the whole earth was rolling like the ocean!  It kinda made me dizzy.  It didn’t last very long and it wasn’t particularly strong.  Just a rolling quake gently moving through the neighborhood.

Fast forward to February of 1971.  It was 1 minute after 6am.  I had just gone to the bathroom and was crawling back into the top bunk.  As soon as my head hit the pillow the quake hit L.A.  It started out with a shimmer, but was full on shaking in seconds.  Being on the top bunk, it was quite a ride!  Everything in the room was shaking violently and it was noisy.  Stuff falling off the walls, etc.  Then I noticed something extraordinary and I’ve never experienced it since (and hope I never do again).  There was a dimension of sound.  As far as my ears could hear there was a rumble and a roar.  It must be how Hollywood was inspired to create surround sound, but there’s nothing like the reality!

I don’t know how long the quake lasted and I don’t remember being scared, but chances are I was.  My brother Chris was in the bottom bunk and slept through the whole thing!  As the morning progressed we started hearing the damage reports.  No real damage at our house and minor damage in the neighborhood.  I remember we were upset that we still had school.  Some of the windows were cracked and in our classroom a portable book shelf had slid across the room dumping it’s contents.

Further north closer to the epicenter in Sylmar, California it was a real disaster.  An overpass had collapsed on a truck killing the driver.  The worst of it was a V.A. Hospital had collapsed killing around 50 people.  Governor Reagan declared a state of emergency.  The USGS put the magnitude at a 6.6 on the Richter Scale.  Major quake indeed and one I will never forget.

The small quakes really are fun!  It’s the big ones that will really shake you up and could kill you if you are in the wrong place in the wrong time.

Weather, Man!

Man do I love weather.  It has been a passion and an obsession since I can remember.  It truly is how God made me.  Of course I have a very strong political and “religious” bent too.  I joke that my favorite subjects to discuss are politics and religion and that’s why God gave me such a passion for weather.  So I can relate to people with without offending them.  :-)

My weather fascination started very early.  My folks tell me that I was always talking about it even as a very young child.  I have early memories of unusual weather events when I was a wee lad in Los Angeles.  Severe Thunderstorms one afternoon and ice in the puddles at school one morning.  I was born in L.A. but we moved to Oregon when I was 8.

Growing up in Oregon was great for a weather freak like me.  Numerous storms coming off the ocean and in the 70s that meant lots of surprises in the actual weather compared to the forecast.  Fluctuating snow levels in the Cascades, east winds into Portland combining with overrunning warm air bringing epic ice storms, but not to our house :-( and I could go on about the different weather phenomenon I got to witness first hand.

I had the TV weather down.  KOIN would have the weather on first so I would watch that.  Then I’d switch over to KGW and catch most of their forecast.  Then it was over to KATU to watch the tail end of their weather.  This was especially important on the rare nights when the snow level had a chance to come down to the Willamette Valley Floor.  I remember many a frustrating evening watching it rain while I would stare at the thermometer stuck at 36 degrees trying to will it to come down.

So obviously I was going to go to school to study Meteorology.  I had it all planned out.  Go to the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and get a BS in Meteorology and minor in Communications.  They had a TV station on campus.  I had a great score on my ACT and was even accepted into their advanced math program.  I was set.  One big problem.  My drug problem.  I still had some growing up to do and I blew my chance to go to school.

The story doesn’t end there however!  I ended up moving to Roswell, NM a few years later.  At 21 years old I took what I could carry and bought a bus ticket and started re-pursuing my dream to be on Radio and TV.  Math and Science were always my favorite subjects in school so naturally I went into broadcasting.

I got a part time radio gig in the early Summer of 1984.  That turned into a full time radio gig.  First overnights and then evenings and then Music Director.  After two years I jumped over to TV as a Master Control Operator, directing news cut-ins and also voicing, shooting and editing commercials.  From there it was into the News Department at another station as a news photog, then a reporter who shot his own stuff and also backing up the weatherman and then finally the weatherman!

Lots of detail left out in the above story, but God helped make a way for me when I had messed up and didn’t choose the easier way.  After another 8 or 9 years on the morning show in Lubbock, Texas as a weatherman, news anchor and feature reporter my life took another turn.  Through it all I have never ever never stopped loving and studying the weather.

Now here I am in Tucson, Arizona.  I have a web site and morning weather web show dedicated to my weather passion.  I just can’t help but share whether the audience is big or small.  When you have a chance, check out the site.  TucsonWeather.us and tune in to “Coffee and a Forecast” every morning (yes, weekends too) at 5:50 Tucson time for the live recording.  Or you can just catch up with it later when I post it on the site and in the Facebook group Tucson Weather.

Whether it is mud in the Pacific Northwest, Baseball sized hail in Lubbock, or Monsoon storms with amazing lightning in Tucson, I love weather.  I especially love snow and cold!  But that is another blog entry (or two).

Of course I have other passions and other web sites that support those.  There is also a lot of detail left out of the above story.  All fodder for future blog entries.  I better post this and get to work.  “Coffee and a Forecast” airs in less then an hour. :-)

California vs. Texas

This was originally posted at the Tucson Tea Party's new blog

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They say everything is bigger in Texas. That is not entirely true. Texas has a much smaller unemployment rate than the rest of the country and a smaller deficit too. Their deficit is so small, it's a surplus!

Compare that to California that excels in joblessness and deficit spending. How did the Golden State squander their gold while Texas is thriving in the the worst economy in a generation?

One only look as far as the ideals that have brought Americans out on the streets asking Washington D.C., pleading really, to shrink the size of Government, lower taxes and embrace fiscal responsibility. The Tucson Tea Party Peeps have been pointing out what Texas is proving. Less really is more when it comes to government and resulting prosperity.

Mark Hemingway shows the contrast between the Golden and Lone Star states in the first of his 5 part series, "Texas booms while California busts." He compares the two states philosophies and behaviors, and the very different results they bring. From the article:

While Texas has been affected by the economic downturn, its 7.9 percent unemployment rate is well below the national average of 9.8. At 12 percent, unemployment in California is well above average.

Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of Texas’ superiority is that Americans have been stating their preference for the Lone Star State with their feet.

Between 2000 and 2009, California had a domestic outflow of 1.5 million people, while Texas had 850,000 move in from other states. From 2008 to 2009, Texas’ population inflow was double that of any other state.

So how have two similar states ended up in such radically different situations? The answer is smaller government.

What Texas is doing “appears as right-wing science fiction to many California legislators and pundits. They claim that serious reform of the tax code is unrealistic, that a large state has many duties to fulfill, and that it is irresponsible to call for a return to a 19th century view of the role of government,” write economists Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore and Jonathan Williams in their annual report “Rich States, Poor States.”

Texas has no state income tax or personal capital gains tax and a small 1 percent gross receipts tax on business. In contrast, California’s 10.3 percent personal income tax is the second highest in the country, and the Golden’s State’s top marginal rates for corporate income and capital gains are 8.84 and 10.55 percent, respectively.

Unfortunately Washington D.C. and the Federal Government aren't listening to the Tea Party and aren't following the real world example of Texas. Instead they continue down the California path that instead of being paved with gold is littered with printed money borrowed from our kids and grandkids.

We the People of the Tucson Tea Party will be back out there holding our signs, peacefully assembling for principles that are obviously and demonstrably right. For a country that is seeking answers we only need to examine the bad and good examples being set by California and Texas.

North Coast San Diego

I’ve always loved the North Coast of San Diego.  As a teenager my brother Chris and I would visit Mom in Mira Mesa.  She would work near the coast and we would hit the beach!  I remember swimming all day body surfing.  The workout was incredible and it was just so fun!

My favorite places were Torrey Pines and Cardiff by the Sea, although Cardiff had some seaweed.  That’ll freak you out a little bit when you are swimming along and some seaweed brushes your leg.

I went to visit my brother this past weekend.  He is living in Oceanside which is even north of San Diego’s north coast.  I got there early enough to make a bee-line to Torrey Pines to watch the sunset and roll some video.  There is nothing like the smell of that salty air, especially when you haven’t been near the ocean in a few years.   Here’s a picture, although it doesn’t quite do the sunset justice:

Chris and I had a great visit!  The highlight was Sunday when he cooked bar-b-que and some of his friends came over.  Quality people and great food.  The Chargers even beat the Eagles.

On Monday morning when I left to come home to Tucson, I had to take the scenic route to the freeway.  I paused at the Pier in Oceanside and again in Carlsbad for these pics.  I can’t wait to visit again.  Just need the money and the time all at the same time.

Thanksgiving Goes PC

This is one of the saddest things I’ve seen in awhile. (well, not really.  There have been a LOT of sad things lately)  There is a dispute at a California school on whether or not kids should dress as Pilgrims and Indians!  Are you kidding me?  Apparently not.  Here.  You can read about it your own self in an L.A. Times article.

From the article:

Raheja, whose mother is a Seneca, wrote the letter upon hearing of a four-decade district tradition, where kindergartners at Condit and Mountain View elementary schools take annual turns dressing up and visiting the other school for a Thanksgiving feast. This year, the Mountain View children would have dressed as Native Americans and walked to Condit, whose students would have dressed as Pilgrims.

Raheja, an English professor at UC Riverside who specializes in Native American literature, said she met with teachers and administrators in hopes that the district could hold a public forum to discuss alternatives that celebrate thankfulness without “dehumanizing” her daughter’s ancestry.

Dehumanizing?  I was taught that it was native Americans that saved the Pilgrims from starving to death!  Native Americans are the HEROES of the story!

It’s another sign of the times.  History is being rewritten and offenses are easier and easier to come by.  You can’t swing a dead cat without offending someone.  Great.  I probably just did it myself.

Meanwhile, what are the kids learning from the parents?  Some of them anyway.

Yummy!

Call me crazy (I’ll wait…  OK) but I LOVE Cod Liver Oil.  Maybe it’s because my parents never resorted to using it as a punishment.  (Thank You Parents!)  It’s true.  Cod Liver Oil is muy muy muy good for you!  Chalk full of vitamin D  (why is something “chalk full”?  What does that even mean???) and Omega 3s.  Mmmmmm Omega 3s.

Another reason that I love Cod Liver Oil?  When I have my tablespoon full every morning, it reminds me of the ocean!  The pungent fish smell (and taste) take me back to Ocean Beach in San Diego catching rock crabs trying not to get pinched.  Or walking along the Oregon Coast, stopping for salt water taffy.  (don’t misunderstand me.  I’m NOT saying Cod Liver Oil tastes like salt water taffy)

It may be just me, but Cod Liver Oil is nutritious AND delicious!