Hey – that’s where I live!

Our itinerary would take us through the Antelope Valley and Mohave Desert to Las Vegas for one night, then to the Hoover Dam and south through the Arizona desert to the Grand Canyon, spending the night in Williams, then further south with a detour through the red rocks of Sedona on the way to Phoenix, where we would be for the next three nights before the long trip home on Interstate 10.

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Click on the pic to see more from our trip to the Grand Canyon!

We’re here! And feeling like a flea in the middle of a superhighway as
the trucks go hurtling by at 80 MPH. Pretty insignificant.

Here’s the back side of Hoover Dam. It’s the first place at which we
had a chance to pull over that they didn’t charge to park. Sorry, no
pics of the classic view. Off to the Grand Canyon!

They have finally run out of names for roads.

I hope everyone had a great Valentine weekend. The weather in Los Angeles was just glorious – temps in the 80s, clear blue skies, not bad for mid-February.

Rhonda and I had a spectacular Sunday, taking a trip to the Americana At Brand complex in Glendale. On the way home, we were listening to K-EARTH on the radio as they were taking Valentine dedication requests all weekend long. There was one in particular from a woman in Tarzana who was dedicating ‘Now That I Found You’ by The Foundations. I thought that was a sweet little moment…until I started thinking about the lyrics:

Baby,
Now that I’ve found you
I won’t let you go
I built my world around you
I need you so
Baby even though
You don’t need me,
You don’t need me oh, no (emphasis added)

Oh well, here’s hoping your day was better than hers.

I and many many others hold that TSA inspections at airports are in essence theater, striving to assure the flying public that air travel to and from the US is as safe as, say, driving a car. So limiting your carry-on liquid containers to 3 oz. or less in size makes a substantial difference, right? Or having your shoes inspected? And now maybe your underwear? I think not.

So what are the real risks that a flight in a commercial jetliner will become a suicide mission? Think about these numbers, compiled by Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com and designed by Jesus Diaz of gizmodo.com:

As Mark Frauenfelder at boingboing.net says:

Maybe the new TSA rules will decrease the odds of being a terrorism victim from 1 in 10,408,947 to 1 in 10,408,948. Let’s hope so!

I haven’t posted much in the way of personal stuff this summer, so here’s a little catch-up.

Although we’re still a couple of weeks away from the official autumnal equinox, summer’s done with the end of the long Labor Day weekend and the fall is approaching. Although, as I noted on Facebook earlier today, Southern California is likely to be subject to six to eight more weeks of summer weather – it’ll be in the mid nineties for the rest of the week.

We also have the major portion of fire season to come in the next couple of months. There’s been nothing in my immediate vicinity (yet) but the enormous Station fire on the northeast side of the LA Basin is stubbornly hanging on. The smoke in the bowl of the San Fernando Valley was easily visible yesterday as I came home from a weekend in Santa Barbara and Ventura.

Los Robles Master Chorale starts its 2009-10 season tonight with the first rehearsal of the newly-reauditoned 85-voice group, holiday concerts scheduled for December. This is also the inaugural season for The Consort Singers, a 24-voice group drawn from within the Chorale. This smaller group will be a little nimbler than its larger parent, and thus will be doing more outreach activity. Its first performances will be in November, an all-a capella program.

Also of note  – get it? Chorale, Singers, music, we sing notes? Get it? Ahem – the Chorale will be taking much of the program from its Spring 2009 concerts ‘on the road’ with a long weekend trip of some of the old missions in southern California next summer.

The reunion about which I’d posted several times last spring and summer came off without a hitch the first weekend of August. Some 80 people came together at Merced First Baptist Church to reminisce and worship together, and it was just fantastic. I couldn’t have hoped for a better turnout, and my only regret that we didn’t have more people and more time together. A bunch of us stayed to participate in the Sunday morning worship and that, too, was a glorious time. Several of us ministered with the worship team, I sang a solo, and about 20 of the alumni formed the Reunion Choir and sang a song at the end of the service. The church will be celebrating its 70th anniversary next year, so maybe we’ll see everyone again sooner than we thought we would.

My friend Elaine from Minnesota came out here three times over the summer, once to celebrate our birthdays at the beginning of May during which she also came to hear both Chorale concerts and to squeeze in a birthday visit to Disneyland, again over the Independence Day holiday, and yet again for the reunion in August – an embarrassment of riches after so many years away from one another. I was hoping to return the favor for the Minnesota State Fair last weekend, but unfortunately I couldn’t pull it together this time.

Other highlights include a couple of movies (Star Trek, Julie and Julia), a concert (Liza at the Hollywood Bowl), a trip or two to my favorite beach in Camarillo, the afore-mentioned trip to Santa Barbara. All in all, a fun summer in a lot of ways, and in some ways a bit of regret along the way. So here’s to you, summer – I’m happy to see you retire, and looking forward to the filtered-light days of autumn followed by the chill of winter – at least as chilly as it gets around here.

Back in June I posted my ponderings regarding the arrest and conviction of Laura Ling and Euna Lee by the North Korean government. As predicted, they were both pardoned and released last week, ostensibly through the ‘heroic’ efforts of former president Bill Clinton, and there was much rejoicing throughout the land.

I direct your attention to an article published over the weekend in the London Daily Mail in which the behind-the-scenes machinations are exposed, along with the real motivations behind the behavior that got these women arrested in the first place. It’s a story of a younger sister intent on stepping out from behind her more famous sibling, of jumping back and forth across the N. Korean border in a childish dare. It was said that the women were in more danger being alone on a plane with bad boy Clinton than they were of ever seeing the inside of a prison camp.

I found it a very interesting read – see the link below.

In peril in Pyongyang? Those girls were in greater danger sharing a plane with Bill Clinton | Mail Online.