Currant Events — Keep Repeating “It’s The Berries”

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THE TRANSFORMATION OF LOPEZ CANYON, 2

When I first shambled through the denuded creek beds, the bare oak terraces, and the blasted-sand alluvial dunes here, back in Feb. of ’19, there was only one flower to be seen, on a distinctive bush right in the transition zone between the lower canyon (oak woodland) and the middle canyon (chaparral). There were maybe a dozen bushes evident. Sweet. I wondered what they were, with their merry yellow-orange flowers and trifoliate leaves.

  • Currant events in February 2019; see the same meadow, today, below.

Never having seen such a thing, I was beguiled. As I’ve visited over the last eighteen months, I’ve tracked them, and they have spread and flourished, and the flowers made berries, that went from green, to pale yellow, to amber, to orange, to red, to purple to black. I found them delicious from orange, on. Turns out these are golden currants, aka bear currants.

As sweet as you could wish. See how they catch and refine California’s golden sunshine. These currants have recovered a range here during the time I’ve been observing. Maybe for the first time since 1797, when the Mission and the cows went in, golden currants are getting a chance to love life in Lopez Canyon. If only there were grizzlies here to eat all those globes of fabulous sunlight! These foothills of the San Gabriels had one of the greatest concentrations of grizzlies in CA, a great scourge to the Tataviam, and later, to the ranchers’ herds. Our state symbol romped in here until about 1900.

  • Last year’s berries, gone black, with no bears to eat them. Still good…still there….hmmm….

The California gardener could find no better solution for a sunny, dry back corner, or as a border along a slopey property line, than a hedge of golden currant. I needn’t remind you, like ALL California natives, they need no soil amendments or watering or maintenance whatsoever during the entire course of their gorgeous existence. That has traditionally been a deal-breaker for the fussy California gardener, who wants to pour thousands of dollars a year into the dead weeds on their property. But for the frugal freeholder, these will trouble you not in the slightest, and amply reward your family’s pie baker.

The same meadow today, 6/6/20, shoulder-high in golden currants!

Coming Back To Life in Lopez Canyon

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A LONG VIEW: THE TRANSFORMATION OF LOPEZ CANYON

Since February, 2019, I have Viewed Lopez Canyon, the Land of Contrasts, many times, and I want to remind Patient Reader, and myself, why, with this sequence of photos. First, a look back to the Old West.

Lopez Canyon, painted by Hermann Herzog around 1870. Those may be cattle roads, but also probably the creek beds. Lopez still hosts many resident hawks, I’ve seen owls, turkey vultures, ravens, crows. Rely on it, you will be surveilled by them if you hike here.

Then it was given over for a city dump (er, “landfill”).

The northern threads of the canyon were miraculously spared complete obliteration about ten years ago when the landfill was decommissioned, and the lightly-used portion given over to the management of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. But until 2017, California was in a terrible drought, and the worn-out hills overgrown with dry tinder and dead grass.

But then in December, 2017 the canyon was scourged almost to the sands by the horrific Creek wildfire. For a month the fires hopscotched over the hills. Then in January, 2018, it started raining, which put out the fires. The land was roasted, but rested a few months. Then in November 2018 “atmospheric rivers” suddenly were being channeled into California, in a way we hadn’t seen for 30 years. Through December of 2018 and January and February of 2019, the worn out terrain of Lopez Canyon was hit by massive flows of water, which scourged the canyons and the encinals again, almost down to the sand — but also enriched that sand with carbon from all the oak-char. It was at this time and in this state, a well watered tabula rasa, that I found Lopez Canyon and started taking pictures.

Photos from February, 2019:

This is roughly the location of the Herzog painting above. In the ’30s, I think, he road was raised about ten feet above the creek beds. See the distant bulldozer repairing it after recent flooding.

At first, is was all about the terrain: uplift!, faults, plutons, the rock cycle, alluvial fans, erosion, oak terraces and oak soil … and I came back all that month to explore.

In 2019, hiking and (sensitive) clambering were easy as pie, since it was all so open. I was astonished by the wild solitude of these dunes: their strange mix of sands and soils, and the geological puzzle of all the shuffled layers. Clambering up, I was astonished that my footfalls would plunge six inches deep into the soft slopes. That doesn’t happen in hard-pan California. Fresh foamy sand? It dawned on me that this is a young canyon, fast-changing, a shimmer of contrasts, a place of shining brow, promising parts, and excellent prospects.

Photos from March, 2019:

Throughout the dry season, while the last of the Spanish pasture mix quickly grew then browned out, healthy chaparral finally had its chance to grow under the thatch, beginning the reclamation.

PHOTOS FROM APRIL, 2019:

The creek bed still had plenty of oak char
higher up was rank with grass.

Photos from September, 2019:

Bush mallows, scale broom, yerba santa appeared.
Meadow awaiting the next rains.

Now comes the big transformation, during the second rainy season after the fires.

Photos from January, 2020:

Photos from February, 2020:

Too Much Mustard; but look at those hills!

Photos from May, 2020:

Photos from June, 2020:

I am fond of all my hiking spots. But seeing what the ground has done here in its seasons of recovery — witnessing what the plants and birds and animals do to the soil — watching the California Floristic Province reclaim it, week by week, season by season — observing the steady decline of the invasive grasses — marking the sudden efflorescences, the emergent leaps, hill by hill, butte by butte, by which an ever more diverse chaparral has grown up, in scarcely over a year — this has been a school for joy.

February, 2019
June, 2020

[Here are the updates. It’s incredible what a difference even a week makes.

Quite a bit of what seems to be Class-A invasive perennial, pepperweed. Hmmm.
A particularly lovely strain of buckwheat has emerged here — delicate and tall, more pink that white. Ravishing.

Joe Biden’s GAFFE! Riot

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CURRENT EVENTS QUIZ DEPT.

[Hoping to goose the ratings, the View’s optimistic publisher has requested more upmarket NPR-style content. Ed.]

This Week’s Question: which of the following ridiculous, hilariously disqualifying, lazy and cynical, status-quo polishing, inane comments did NOT come from Folky Joe this week?

Joe Biden said Monday that police under attack in the line of duty should shoot their assailants “in the leg instead of the heart” as a way to avert the killing of civilians. “Instead of standing there and teaching a cop, when there’s an unarmed person coming at them with a knife or something, you shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart is a very different thing. There’s a lot of different things that could change,” Biden said in a meeting with community leaders at Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Del.

— David Knowles, writing for Yahoo News 6/1/20

We go to the panel, made up of Two Kitty Cats Cute. Norah, please go first.
NORAH: Whoo-hoo-hoo, that first one is a real doozy. Does this guy even know he’s running in America? Shooting racism away is okay if it only lames?
ITO: Yes. That is too outrageous; like the bullshit of some drunken tavern lout.
NORAH: I’m leaning toward that one being false.
ITO: It must be. It’s too monstrously out-of-touch. Remember the Czar’s disappointment when he learned the Cossack cavalry, whom he ordered to charge the peasants, sabres flashing, had actually killed the peasants demonstrating in the square?
NORAH: No Ito, I don’t. [chuckles from audience] We both say false.

Sorry, Kitty Cats Cute, it’s true! No points. May we have the next quote, please?

Biden speaking on Thursday night, to the actor Don Cheadle [in an Online Town Hall for Young Americans]: “The words a president says matter,” Biden said as he criticized Donald Trump’s response to the crisis. “When a president stands up and divides people all the time you’re going to get the worst of us to come out. Biden then added: “Do we really think this is as good as we can be as a nation? I don’t think the vast majority of people think that. There are probably anywhere from 10% to 15% of the people out there that are just not very good people, but that’s not who we are. “The vast majority of the people are decent, and we have to appeal to that and we have to unite people – bring them together. Bring them together.”

Biden’s words echoed Hillary Clinton, the Democrat beaten by Trump in 2016, who famously said a “big basket” of the Republican’s supporters were “deplorables … 

–Martin Pegnelly, writing for the Guardian, 2/5/20

[Hooting and laughter from the audience] All right, settle down, animals! Ito, you first.

ITO: The whole argument seems circular and self-defeating. Bloviation, without motivation.
NORAH: I agree! it sounds like a profound statement of hope, but it is really tragically cynical and hypocritical. Plus it’s a total, classic punt: telling those kids, it’s their job to fix America, if they work hard enough, so that he just gets to coast.
ITO: It is a broken fan, in an abandoned house, spinning in the breeze whistling through a cracked, dirty window. I vote it is “echt” Joe Biden.
NORAH: That makes two of us, honey! I know that defeatist, “YOU are the change” “Bring ’em all together and give ’em a lollipop” tone anywhere.

DING DING DING DING! [applause] [applause] Yes, both right, ten points each. May we have the final quote please?

In a press conference today Sen. Biden was shown the video from Buffalo of a peaceful, unarmed senior citizen being pushed by police violently to the ground, audibly cracking his skull till the blood stained the pavement, while the phalanx of peace officers marched noiselessly forward, never deviating from formation to aid the citizen, despite the pleas of protesters and medics. Asked to comment, the Senator paused thoughtfully a moment, then looked up. “My dad always said, ‘Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.’

— Kenneth MacAlpin writing for Drumthwacket, 4/5/20

[Hoots and hollers from the audience.] NORAH: Oh come on, that’s too easy — is this a trick question? Of course that’s vintage Joe. Offensive, out-of-touch, and plastic all at once.
ITO: Yes, there is no way to counterfeit such a vanishing, helium-filled platitude. As you say, Norah, vintage Joe. [applause] [applause]

Well, Kitty Cats Cute, I’m afraid you’re wrong. It was a trick question! Norah, I thought you were close, that you’d get this right off. It IS a Joe Biden quote — reportedly, one of his favorite content-free canecdotes. So — vintage Joe, yes —
NORAH: I knew I’d heard it before!
ITO: Ahh, but not a quote from this week…clever. I had forgotten.
NORAH: It’s how do you call it — out of context.

Out of context, and not from this week, which of course, was the question. So far, that we know, as of yet, Sen. Biden has not told that elderly victim of fascism in Buffalo to just get up.
ITO: But [chuckles] the Senator DID just go on record, or nearly, as saying the police ought to have shot him in the leg, rather than dashing his brains out on the concrete. Ha ha, ha ha.

Correct, Ito, there is that irony. But, sorry, no marks for either Kitty Cat Cute on that one. That leaves the score, 10 all, a tie, a wash, and, like listening to Joe Biden, a complete waste of time. See you next week for more “Joe Biden’s Gaffe! Riot.”

Can The Unstoppable Leaf Blower Bring Down Fascism?

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https://news.yahoo.com/black-lives-matter-demonstrators-using-151134821.html

In the most ironic twist imaginable, that horrible, ineradicable urban scourge, the leaf blower, has emerged as a go-to device for Anti-Fascists to clear away the noxious tear gas hurled into peaceful protests by the police. If used correctly, they might just save our citizens’ democratic right to assembly.

The genius of these ghastly poisonous weapons, is that, for police officers, leaf blowers are completely invisible. Nobody really knows why, but despite years and years of citizen outrage and protest, after the decades-long civic organizing it takes to fight City Hall, after even passing that law banning the damn things ten or fifteen years ago, we citizens have learned to our dismay, that since the cops apparently can’t see them, can’t smell the fumes, and can’t even hear the window-rattling roars up and and down every block in the city 14 times a week, the police are totally, totally powerless against the devices. This “invisibility to cop” has left the citizens with no defenders against the machines.

So, while we all just have to go on enduring the insult of these weapons, with their smoke and forced dust and particulates and pollen and doggie-doo all blown into our windows, our cars, our nostrils, our throats, our ears, and our lungs every day up and down every street in town, the good news is, protesters and demonstrators are realizing they CAN win the arms race of freedom, even against today’s fascist militarized police, by blowing away their tear gas, and making the streets safe for peaceful demonstration once more!

March organizers are learning that nobody operating a leaf blower will have it confiscated, not even if it is pointed right at a person, so that the blast of dust and leaves and street garbage flies up into the face, blinding and choking the poor victim far more effectively than merely annoying tear-gas. This crime happens every day, on every street in LA, yet no police officer has ever confiscated one, or ticketed an offender for wielding one.

So why shouldn’t protesters — in whatever cause? but let’s say Black Lives Matter — just all go buy one, and march with them, 3,000-strong, in a great roaring dragon-crowd down Main Street? And of course, each ought to be sure to bring along a gasoline canister, you know, those red plastic ones, like the yard-criminals use, to make sure to keep the life-destroying monsters alive, and the police at a respectful distance, throughout the protest.