The Amazingly Beautiful American West

Lake Jenny - Grand Tetons, Wyoming

Illouette Falls

One of Yosemite's beautiful waterfalls that most people have never seen or even heard about.

Who ever heard of Peyton Randolph ???

The first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, from September 5, to October 26, 1774. Carpenter's Hall was also the seat of the Pennsylvania Congress. All of the colonies except Georgia sent delegates. These were elected by the people, by the colonial legislatures, or by the committees of correspondence of the respective colonies. The colonies presented there were united in a determination to show a combined authority to Great Britain, but their aims were not uniform at all. Pennsylvania and New York sent delegates with firm instructions to seek a resolution with England. The other colonies voices were defensive of colonial rights, but pretty evenly divided between those who sought legislative parity, and the more radical members who were prepared for separation. Virginia's delegation was made up of a most even mix of these and not incidentally, presented the most eminent group of men in America. Colo. George Washington, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton, Colo. Benjamin Harrison, Richard Bland, and at the head of them Peyton Randolph — who would immediately be elected president of the convention.

The objectives of the body were not entirely clear but, with such leadership as was found there, a core set of tasks was carried out. It was agreeable to all that the King and Parliament must be made to understand the grievances of the colonies and that the body must do everything possible to communicate the same to the population of America, and to the rest of the world.

"for the next generation"

More than $1.1 billion in construction contracts to renovate facilities at Los Angeles International Airport were approved today by L.A.'s airport commission. An architectural rendering of the planned Bradley West Concourse calls for building new gates to accommodate the next generation of large commercial planes like the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787.

The Controversy Has Not Been Forgtten

The name "Hetch Hetchy" comes from a grass with edible seeds that grows in the valley, in the Native American Sierra Miwok language. It was first used in the English language by Joseph Screech, who in 1850 became the first European to enter the valley. Screech noted that Paiutes[1] had inhabited Hetch Hetchy and still gathered seeds, roots and acorns in and around it. Acorns are indeed available in the valley, but rare elsewhere in the high country.

Charles F. Hoffmann of the California Geological Survey conducted the first survey of the valley, in 1867.

In 1906, after a major earthquake, San Francisco applied to the United States Department of the Interior to gain water rights to Hetch Hetchy. This provoked a seven-year environmental struggle with the environmental group Sierra Club, led by John Muir. Muir observed:

Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.
Proponents of the dam replied that the valley would be even more beautiful with a lake. Muir correctly predicted that this lake would deposit an unsightly ring around its perimeter, which would be visible at low water. Because the valley was within Yosemite National Park, an act of Congress was needed to start the project. The federal government ended the dispute in 1913, with the passage of the Raker Act, which permitted flooding of the valley.

Construction of the dam was finished in 1923. Water from the dam serves 2.4 million Californians in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Alameda Counties, as well as some communities in the San Joaquin Valley, and generates electricity for San Francisco. Environmental groups (including the Sierra Club) advocate removing the dam.

"a bit of a mystery"

An 1886 photograph shown at the L.A. archives bazaar is a bit of a mystery. The man at their feet is identified as Lt. Rockwood, but why did members of the Pasadena Broom Brigade gather? (Pasadena Museum of History / October 17, 2009)

"Beauty and History"

Here's an interesting trip: From Los Angeles, take Interstate 5 north to California Highway 99 to Merced. In Merced, exit Highway 99 and pick up County Road J59 north toward Lagrange. In Lagrange, take J132 east toward Coulterville. Then pick up the Priest/Coulterville Road, which zigzags its way up to California Highway 120 just three miles short of the historic gateway town of Groveland. Continue north on 120 to Evergreen Road, which takes you into the campground, with a stop at the Evergreen Lodge (shown above) and Camp Mather, where it dead-ends into Hetch Hetchy Road on the way to the Hetch Hetchy Dam. It is a lovely drive from Merced on. Be sure to stop in Groveland for gasoline (there is none in Hetch Hetchy), stretch your legs and visit the Mountain Sage Visitors Center and photographer Robb Hirsch's excellent gallery.

Here's the place for "eye-popping, color-drenched spectacles"

What: A new Southern California haven for serious photography.

Where: The Annenberg Space for Photography, Century Park, 2000 Avenue of the Stars, No. 10, Los Angeles; (213) 403-3000, annenbergspaceforphotography.org.

Admission: Free

The Annenberg Space for Photography, open since March 27, is designed to remind you of a camera's insides and to show you the wide world.

It's also aimed at the digital future: Though there are gorgeous photos hung on the walls, there isn't much wall space. You're probably going to spend more time looking at digital images on monitors and larger rear-projection screens, which can deliver eye-popping, color-drenched spectacles.

There are many pluses to this, because voice-overs and soundtracks often give the monitor and screen presentations more oomph. But old-school photophiles may wish more room were given to museum-style displays.

The 10,000-square-foot space (on the Century City site where the Shubert Theater once stood) features plenty of high-tech gizmos along with its gallery space, rooms for slide shows, lectures and workshops, and, I'm not exactly sure why, a kitchen. The hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays. Through Nov. 1, the space is showing "Pictures of the Year International," a survey of 2008 photojournalism assembled by the Missouri School of Journalism's Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. (If you get there in time, check out Ronald W. Erdrich's amazing shot of a zooming orange butterfly.)

"every inhabitant of a house by Gehry becomes an artist . . ."

Since curating Frank Gehry's first major retrospective, an exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1986, Mildred Friedman has written extensively about the master architect. For her latest book, she has selected 21 of Gehry's most significant, mid-career residential buildings from the 1960s to the late 1980s. The houses predate Gehry's best-known works and, with a couple of exceptions, are free of computer-aided-design structures.

Friedman's choices underscore the organic nature of Gehry's early experimentation with form and materials, and they illustrate the creative spirit of the houses. As UCLA architecture professor Sylvia Lavin writes in the introduction, "every inhabitant of a house by Gehry becomes an artist as they are called on not merely to use its spaces but to perceive its architectures."

Hollenbeck Home for the Aged in Boyle Heights in the 1890s

The Hollenbeck Home for the Aged in Boyle Heights (Los Angeles) in 1896: A home for 'fortunate unfortunates'

All You Fear Is Here

Knott’s Berry Farm will add four new mazes for Halloween Haunt 2009, according to theme park officials.

The 37th annual Knott’s Scary Farm will take place on Wednesday through Sunday nights from Sept. 24 through Oct. 31, 2009.

The granddaddy of Halloween events will feature 13 mazes scattered throughout the Buena Park theme park, with construction currently underway in backstage areas.

New for 2009:

Uncle Bobo’s Big Top of the Bizarre in 3-D replaces Killer Clown Kollege (under Xcelerator)

Terror of London featuring Jack the Ripper and Dr. Jekyll replaces 13 Axe Murder Manor (in Mystery Lodge)

Dia de los Muertos in 3-D featuring a Day of the Dead theme replaces Lost Vegas (at the bumper cars)

Lockdown: The Asylum updates the existing maze as a high-security penitentiary for the insane (backstage near Ghostrider)

"death etiquette "

Heritage Square Museum is getting a little creepy for Halloween. The Highland Park landmark is offering mourning tours, teaching about death etiquette in Victorian times. You even can participate in a funeral. Did you know, for instance, that while women were expected to mourn for two years, men got off with a single year? "Since funeral parlors were yet to be invented," director of administration and operations Jessica Alicea says, "bodies were kept at home in a casket for viewing." The programs will be offered noon to 4 p.m. Oct. 24 and 25. Sunday is more family friendly; children ages 2 to 12 are encouraged to come in costume, play period games and make 19th century harvest crafts. The San Gabriel Valley Storytellers will spin spooky stories in the Ford House, one of the historic structures that make up Heritage Square. $5 to $10; kids younger than 6 are free. 3800 Homer St., Los Angeles; (323) 225-2700, heritagesquare.org.

Is 2012 the end of the world?

If you scan the Internet or believe the marketing campaign behind the movie "2012," scheduled for release in November, you might be forgiven for thinking so. Dozens of books and fake science websites are prophesying the arrival of doomsday that year, by means of a rogue planet colliding with the Earth or some other cataclysmic event.

Normally, scientists regard Internet hysteria with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a shake of the head. But a few scientists have become so concerned at the level of fear they are seeing that they decided not to remain on the sidelines this time.

"The world will not come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012," E.C. Krupp, director of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory, declared in a statement released Thursday by the observatory and Sky & Telescope magazine. Krupp debunks the 2012 doomsday idea in the cover story of the magazine's November issue.

Morrison said he attributes the excitement to the conflation of several items into one mega-myth. One is the persistent Internet rumor that a planet called Nibiru or Planet X is going to crash into the Earth. Then there's the fact that the Maya calendar ends in 2012, suggesting that the Maya knew something we don't. Finally, end-of-the-worlders have seized upon the hubbub about the 2012 date to proclaim their belief that end times are drawing near.

Morrison, who heads the Lunar Science Institute at the Ames Research Center in Northern California, has coined a term for the phenomenon: "cosmophobia," a fear of the cosmos. According to Morrison, for the most vulnerable among us, all of the things we've learned about the universe in the last century have only increased the number of potential threats to our existence.

Besides fearing a rampaging planet, the worriers think the sun might lash out at the Earth with some calamitous electromagnetic force. They also fear that some sort of alignment between the Earth and the center of our galaxy could unleash catastrophe.

California "UFO cloud" via Chicago

By WGN weather on October 15, 2009 4:44 PM

Tom Skilling reports that "Mariann, who is from Bridgeview, IL, snapped this photo Tuesday of what she refers to as a "UFO cloud" while visiting Palm Springs, California. It's not unusual to hear such clouds referred to as UFO-like because of their lens-like shape. Lenticular clouds are a form of "standing wave" cloud--a stationary, comparatively high altitude lens-shaped cloud which can linger for some time as air flows over mountain ranges. The fact that mountain ranges are fixed in place means air ascends at the same location producing a cloud which appears to linger for some time. The cloud Mariann captured in this shot Tuesday is precisely such a cloud. What a TERRIFIC shot! THANKS for sending this along, Mariann!"

Olympic Memories

Drummers perform during the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics at the National Stadium on August 8, 2008 in Beijing. (Adam Pretty/Getty Images)

Unforgettable Images from the Third Man (1949)

"an illegal usurper, unlawful pretender and unqualified impostor."

A federal judge in Columbus fined a leader of the movement challenging President Obama's citizenship and warned her against using the legal system to pursue "political rhetoric and insults."

U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land's scathing 43-page order, issued Tuesday, said California lawyer and dentist Orly Taitz had filed "frivolous" litigation and attempted to misuse the courts to push a political agenda.

Taitz, a leader of the so-called birther movement, sued in Georgia federal court on behalf of Army Capt. Connie Rhodes. Rhodes sought to avoid deployment to Iraq by claiming Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and that he was "an illegal usurper, unlawful pretender and unqualified impostor."

Documents show the president was born in Hawaii.

Land, appointed in 2001 by President George W. Bush, had already dismissed the lawsuit, but Taitz continued filing motions. He said he fined her $20,000 "as a deterrent to prevent future misconduct and to protect the integrity of the court."

Taitz told a newspaper that Land's order was "an absolute outrage."

"They'll throw the Facebook at him"

As a fugitive abroad, Maxi Sopo was living a dream, kicking back on the beaches of Cancun by day, partying in the clubs by night.

Then he did two things that are never a good idea when you're on the run: He started posting Facebook updates about how much fun he was having -- and he added a former Justice Department official to his list of friends.

That landed Sopo, 26, in a Mexico City jail, where he is awaiting extradition to Seattle on bank fraud charges. Prosecutors say he and an associate falsely obtained more than $200,000 from banks and credit unions. If convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison.

"searching for his place in the world"

Promising a return to Cirque du Soleil's origins, the Montreal-based circus' latest production, "Kooza," focuses on acrobats and clowning while telling the story of the Innocent, a melancholy loner who meets a panoply of comic characters while searching for his place in the world. Grand Chapiteau at the Santa Monica Pier, 1550 Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica. 8 p.m. Tue .-Thu.; 4 and 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; 1 and 5 p.m. Sun. Through Nov. 29. $55-$250, adults; $54-$112, seniors, students and military; $42-$175, children younger than 12. www.cirquedusoleil.com/kooza.

“Tower of Power”

Imagine a bamboo tree house which is not only completely self sufficient, but also manages to produce more power than it needs. Fanciful thinking? No way!

Solar hooch- a backyard “Tower of Power” can actually do it. How? Well, high in the air, the hooch rises above the shadows cast upon the ground-from trees and buildings. With an unobstructed southern exposure, the solar hooch catches and stores solar heat through an abundance of south facing windows. The sun shines through upon a unique array of water filled aluminum cans that span the loft. With a days worth of solar thermal energy stored in the water, the bamboo mesh futon can be lowered over the storage for a night of warmth and comfort.


Apart from the solar hooch helping you to lower electricity bills, it provides an ideal space for some exclusive-me-time without infringing on the backyard space.