Welcome to the blog of writer and musician Andrew Martin. Here I'll post original photographs and observations as I encounter the history and culture of the San Fernando Valley, the City of the Angels, Alta California and the far-flung Pacific Rim… but mostly the Valley.
Don’t make lemonade! At least not with these, which are on public land at Franklin Canyon Reservoir Park. The shady upper canyon has the most magnificent stands of this chaparral beauty; but this year the bounty was truly incredible! The birds and beasts will enjoy their feasts.
Ours is vigorous and green, with red growth tips. Rhus integrifolia — get the integrity in that foliage!
But it has never berried. It looks like we’ll get to make REAL lemonade (from our hard-working Meyer) long before our California slacker starts producing.
A panorama of the San Fernando Valley, shot from the Topanga Overlook. Santa Susanna Mountains at left; San Fernando Pass in the middle, the San Gabriels on the right. Happy Thanksgiving from the View!
The Royal Scottish Museum — The National Museum of Scotland — Great BBC Documentary — click, with glee:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDfogg You know the algorithm is working its fingers to the bone, to suddenly pop this 2016 BBC documentary into my “why don’t you watch this?” queue. All right, algorithm; you win. I watched it. (No nasty commercials!)
The history of Scottish silver; a Viking chess set; preserving a sperm whale skeleton to hang; Mary Queen of Scots, her harp; restoring Bonnie Prince Charlie’s tartan; meteorites; Audubon’s Birds of North America!!!; early Egyptology; the fashions of designer Jean Muir. I was spellbound for an hour. Youse, will be too.
In 2006 they built a handsome and PERFECT new addition to the venerable old pile on Chambers Street, to modernize and incorporate the collections of several other institutions. This made me glad, for it is in the tradition of Edinburgh, as a place that pools its intellectual history; it really led the world in mass public education, by exhibiting the evidence itself, the actual objects. (The Museum was founded from combining the old University collections with those of the Society of Antiquarians, and many other private sources, including the Crown.)
Students got in cheap when I was there, and I went browsing in the Museum about once a week. It was amazing – the fustiest possible, the Ur-fusty, Eminent Museum of Victorian Progress. That is not in any way a criticism — trilobites upon trilobites, Old Red Sandstone overlaying Silurian greywacke, extinct birds of the Southern Hemisphere; James Watt’s Steam Engine. The cultural, intellectual and natural history of the world lay open in those days for a geek’s kick-around visit. Glory be, and blessings on my folks.
There was a stuffed dodo, in a glass case. LESSON LEARNED.
Feathered costumes of Pacific Islanders. Bones….bones. Tons of what we would call steampunk: Newcomen engines, assaying tools, and on the ground floor two ancient locomotives: Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly, built to haul coal a few hundred feet out of the mine. Those engines were interpreted by a looped tape of a woman’s voice, so soporific and hypnotic, that it cast a kind of Druidic enchantment upon anyone foolish enough to enter the gallery. You were stuck to the spot, like Merlin, until you learned every detail of Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly from the drear Nimue’s spell. (None of this made the cut of the documentary, and bloody right. It’s much better now!)
Ken, one of my fondest days with you, ever, was spent crawling through here.
William Chambers, Lord Provost of Edinburgh. If Embro is truly “the Athens of the North,” he is its MacPericles.
Scrub oak acorns and sycamore leaves; Fremont Cottonwoods and arroyo willows; black walnut leaves screening a white-gold sky. Like the canyons on our side, Big and Little Tujunga, the canyons on the shady northern side of the San Gabriels have their own complex flora, geology, and history. All of these are well preserved at Placerita Canyon County Park, just over the Pass in Newhall.
I’ve hiked here before, and blogged about the ceanothus and buckthorns and the “Oak of the Golden Dream.” This time I only wanted some quick pictures of Walker’s “Fancy Rocks”‘ but I saw the main Canyon Trail was finally re-opened. Yowza! An unexpected marine layer was darkening the already darkling canyon floor; it was already 3:00 in the afternoon. But the air was bracing; so fresh and crisp you could bite it like an apple.
The geology in the canyon is also rich and complex, with San Gabriel Fault running through it. The “Placerita Canyon Formation” of metamorphic limestone-schist-quartzite yields the “Fancy Rocks” found in the creek and on the slopes. These were, and are, a highly valued signature of the local strain of Cal Vern Arch, as here at Walker’s Cabin (1920), the home of the family who donated the land for the Park. (The ranching Walkers had a side business of selling Fancy Rocks to builders, apparently at a nice premium over plain ol’ Tujunga or Arroyo riverstones).
An extremely rare (unique?) kind of “white petroleum” seeps up here, naturally distilled by its percolation through the Fault, so it bubbles out as nearly pure kerosene. Don Andres Pico may have been the first wildcatter in the 1860s, filling bottles to sell as lamp oil in LA. One of the wells had a 100 year record of profitable pumping. Small wells still pump on private lands adjacent to the Park.
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In 1841 the first documented gold dust from California was panned here: “Before melting, 18 34-100 oz.; after melting, 18 1-100 oz.; fineness, 926-1000; value, $344.75; deduct expenses sending to Philadelphia and agency there, $4.02; net, $340.73.” The diggings continued to yield several thousands a year. In a future post we’ll trace how, on today’s date, November 22 in 1842, gold from this canyon was turned into hard dollars at the Mint in Philadelphia. The story illuminates how Alta California’s economy operated in practice. Here, from the SCV Historical Society, is the notice of its arrival in NYC:
Until I blog further on gold in the local geology, Impatient Reader, the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society runs the best local history website I have ever seen in my life. You can delve into their Placerita Canyon page NOW, at whim, to explore the fascinating history of mineral extraction in Santa Clarita Valley: https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/placerita.htm
Over a dozen turkey vultures circled over my head…hmmm…
They don’t want folks in here for a very good reason: this is LA’s water supply. But it is important for citizens to connect with the divine places. If you’ve got limber knees and honor the sagebrush and ask Chinigchinich and know the right access points to pull over for an hour — ah! que cela suffise. Big Tujunga Canyon, on a breezy bright November day. This is Scorpio time, the best of the year.
The Valley Village View 