Category Archives: Americana

Winding down The Cousin’s trip: The Rim Fire

September 30, 2013Americana, Around home, PhotographySteve Stern

The Rim Fire started about three weeks before The Cousins were slated to arrive at Tahoe. At the end of the get together, Michele and I were going to take one of The Cousins – Marion, a British photojournalist now living in France – to Yosemite, so I started watching satellite pictures to see where the smoke was going. It was startling how fast the fire grew. It is changing now, but – for years – our National Fire policy made the fire problem worse. Smokey the bear and Bambi insisted that we put out all fires. Meanwhile the forests continued to produce kindling so that, eventually, when a fire started it would be much more powerful and destructive than if we had let nature take its course. This was one of those new, bigger, fires.

Michele went back to Napa to be with her mother, so I ended up alone with Marion on the Yosemite leg of the trip. For three weeks minus one day, Yosemite was clear and Tahoe was smoky, then – one day before we headed south through Nevada to the backside of Yosemite – the wind changed.

Driving south through the Minden-Gardnerville area, the west looked clear as we passed the very spot I had abandoned the Range Rover this spring. Only now I am looking at the view rather than a radiator hose. Every time we pass grazing cattle with mountains in the background, Marion wants to stop. It is an iconic western scene for which I have become so accustomed that I almost don’t see it. Now, seeing the same scene through Marion’s eyes, it seems almost exotic.

A little while later, we get to the Nevada-California stateline with the obligatory casino. I have never stopped here in – maybe – more than twenty five trips, but, today, the timing is perfect for lunch. The view is great and the food is cheap (to get customers in, I’m guessing).

I read recently read that dance clubs like XS at the Encore resort in Las Vegas are now making more money than gambling. Not here. Here gambling is still the draw; OK, gambling and the $6.99 all you can eat lunch (which, strangely enough, was better than the upscale restaurant we ate at in Reno the night before). And, even at that, the gambling area was dismally empty.

Running south along the eastern edge of the Sierras was a little like running along the Dagorlad Plain outside of Mordor. Looking at Matterhorn Peak and Sawtooth Ridge from Bridgeport was not comforting.

Neither was looking down on Mono Lake from the viewpoint near Conway Summit.

However, it was not until we got to Tuolumne Meadows that the full impact of the smoke from the fire really hit me. Everything was just dark and dead. The Tuolumne sparkle was gone. The Range of Light was dark and cold. I was shocked both to see my beloved Sierras this way and that Marion’s first impression was so dismal.

Sunset at Olmsted Point was a little better but not much.

That night we were supposed to meet Nicole, Claudia, and Christian’s family at the Whoa Nelly, in Lee Vining for dinner, but we got our signals crossed and semi-missed them, which seemed very appropriate.

Highway 120 was closed at Yosemite Creek – or thereabouts – because of the fire, so my old plan of going over Tioga into Yosemite Valley didn’t work. My new plan was to spend the night in Lee Vining, where we had a reservation made before the fire, and then drive around the fire if 120 remained closed. It did and the next day, we would drive north and cross the Sierras at Sonora Pass and then pick up Highway 120 and go into Yosemite Valley from the west. It was cumbersome – 200 miles of mountain roads, more than 4 hours – but I kept telling myself that it was a pain in the ass for me but this fire was disaster for alot of people, So stop complaining.

In the morning, we had an early breakfast at Latte Da where the day was bright and almost clear, and then headed north and then west into Mordor again.

By the time we got there, the Rim Fire was mostly contained and on the west side of the Sierras, we ran into Thank You signs.

Finally, at the Rim of the WorldView Turnout on Highway 120 – which is probably where the fire’s name came from – we saw the burned out hillsides of the Tuolumne Canyon. The size of the devastation was breathtaking, it went as far north as we could see.

When I was a kid, we were taught that a fire killed everything in its path (and it is easy to believe when looking at the just burned out Tuolumne Canyon). In school ,and TV ads, we were shown movies of poor Bambi left motherless by fire. However, sometime during the 1980, the BLM or the Forest Service changed their policy and started letting wild fire burn as long as they weren’t burning people or buildings. There was alot of pushback on the new policy by traditionalists (as recently as 1988, most people were up in arms when the BLM let the Yellowstone fire burn). Now, everybody is starting to understand that fires are a necessary part of the natural cycle and the forests need them to stay healthy.

We saw the proof shortly after we drove by the devastation of the Rim Fire, when we saw the rebounding site of the 2009 Big Meadow Fire.

The whole purpose of this drive was to get Marion into Yosemite and now it was becoming obvious that it would be smoke filled. There were times during the 60s that we went to Yosemite Valley almost every weekend. We would backpack in the Highcountry and end the trip in the Valley. Or take the shuttle to Glacier Point and walk down past Nevada Falls and, ending in the late afternoon, walk down the Mist Trail. It was magic.

But that was a long time ago and I had forgotten how spectacular Yosemite valley is. It was smoky and the light was flat, but Marion was still able to catch a bit of the grandeur.

We were still able to see climbers on El Capitan (helpfully pointed out by people with binoculars).

We were still able to drive to the Tunnel View parking lot at the end of the day to copy Ansel Adams (without waterfalls and clouds).

We were stll able to enjoy Yosemite along with everybody else.

Lockheed following me around

September 27, 2013AmericanaSteve Stern

A couple of weeks ago, I googled the F-35 boondoggle. Wikipedia, in what I suspect is an entry made by Lockheed itself, says that The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine, fifth-generation multirole fighters under development to perform ground attack, reconnaissance, and air defense missions with stealth capability.

What it doesn’t say is, as Time Magazine says, the $400 billion program is the most costly in the history of the world. Its price has jumped by nearly 70% since…2001. What it doesn’t say is that even the optimists say it will cost more than $30,000 per hour to fly and that it still doesn’t work well enough to fly in a warzone (where we are still flying the A-10 Warthog which costs about $61 million compared to the F-35 $294 million).

Anyway, the point is that Lockheed ad are now following me around; I think they are try to sell me a Littoral Combat Ship shown, above, projecting freedom somewhere. When I Google something – editorially, so to speak – Google knows and uses it to steer ads to me. That is pretty amazing and more than a little creepy. Forget NASA spying on us, they are pikers compared to Google.

Traveling with The Cousins

September 26, 2013Americana, PhotographySteve Stern

This year, The Cousins get together was at Michele and Claudia’s family cabin at Squaw Valley. That was great because it gave Claudia a chance to show off some of her world and Fred to show off Lake Tahoe. I have been looking forward to it, not only because I was able to attend, but it also gave me a chance to show the Europeans a part of North America I figured they wouldn’t otherwise see. It turned out that the trip was different than I expected.

One of the things that I didn’t expect was how much the Europeans knew about the United States and California. I picked Cousin Marion, from southwestern France, at the airport. While we were driving up to Tahoe, she mentioned that she had photographed our governor, Jerry Brown, when he was in Africa with Linda Ronstadt. I was shocked that she knew he was our governor again. A Cousin from Germany was an Americophile and he has seen more of the United States than I have. Cousin Fred wanted to show the other cousins Lake Tahoe but almost everybody had already seen it. But nobody had been to Gerlach or Mono Lake which was where I wanted to take them.

We all arrived on Thursday and on Friday we went up Donner Pass, had lunch, and visited the Emigrant Trail Museum in Donner Memorial State Park. Then most of the group opted for a nap. The German, Americophile, Christian – it is a long story and not mine to tell – remembered seeing Lake Tahoe on a bus trip when he was an exchange student in highschool. He very much wanted to see it again, so several of us, deducing that it was from the Mt. Rose highway decided to find the view point. After lots of false views, we finally found it.

I have looked across Tahoe hundreds of times and this time the air was as opaque as I have ever seen it. I don’t remember ever not being able to see across the lake (Tahoe is at 6000 feet, so typically it has brilliantly clear views across the lake like that from a year ago).

This year, the lake was socked-in by the Rim Fire near Yosemite (although Donner had been clear earlier). Saturday was the day when most of the family would be in town and we celebrated with a boat trip. The haze and smoke was even worse than Friday but everybody had a good time and I got some smoky pictures.

The next day we went to Sugar Pine Point State Park where a couple of us toured the Isaias Hellman mansion and several others took the opportunity to go swimming.

The water was reputed to be much warmer than usual, I wouldn’t know.

Monday was the day I had been looking forward to because I got to take the group to Mike Moore’s place at Wall Spring in the Smoke Creek Desert. My plan was to go via a rout Mike had touted, Truckee to Sierraville, Doyle, and then Sand Pass into the Smoke Creek. At our first stop, Sierraville – now looking at the trip through new eyes because I was with a group of ferriners – the first thing I noticed was all the American flags. I find all these flags a little strange – OK, more than a little – in that this is Red California. This is the kind of place that votes Republican and wants the Federal Government – the government that these flags represent – out of their lives. (In the bay Area, where we don’t see many flags, outside of public buildings, we want the Federal Government in our lives.)

Driving around the Sierra Valley is always a nice prelude to the desert to come and, to me at least, is quintessentially American West.

Leaving Doyle, California, where everybody wanted to make one last bathroom stop, we cross a small stream and finally enter the Nevada desert (and it is only a couple of hundred miles east of where we live). Entering Nevada is typically marked by a big billboard and, usually a casino, but here the border is just marked by a small sign back to back with an entering California sign for people going the other way. Usually I am driving about 60 or 70 miles per hour down these roads because I am trying to get somewhere and, of course, I am late. Driving at anything over 50 takes concentration on a gravel road, so I only get the general layout of the land but miss many of the details I am seeing now that we are driving much slower. We even saw a couple of real cowboys and burros – probably abandoned by miners years ago – which pleased everyone including me.

We finally got to Sand Pass and looked down on the Smoke Creek Desert. The spaces are immense.

After running along the Smoke Creek Desert for 30 or 40 miles, we get to Wall Spring. It is an intimate oasis and a great place to have lunch.

As the shadows get long, we reluctantly pack up and drive past the Black Rock Playa, then south through the Lake Winnemucca basin. The lake is dry because much of the Truckee River, which used to flow into both it and Pyramid Lake, has been diverted by various irrigation projects. Now all that remains are old beaches and tufa towers that may have the oldest petroglyphs in North America.

We end our trip at a rest stop overlooking Pyramid Lake as the day ended.

America’s Cup and the home team

September 24, 2013Americana, Around homeSteve Stern

Ed Dieden and I went to San Francisco, today, to watch the America’s Cup. It was interesting but the America’s Cup is one of those sports that work better on television. I thought that by going, we would be able to catch the energy of the crowd. Maybe at the finish line but not at Crissy Field where we were.

First, the crowd is pretty spread out compared to stadium or, even, a car race.

Second, because we are almost always looking at the race at an angle and it was hard to tell who was ahead.

The easiest way was to ask the guy watching it on his iPad.

He also had an American flag and lots of people seemed to be rooting for a team. I think that the New Zealand Team is actually from New Zealand, but the American team is mostly from Australia (although the guy with the iPad did say that the American team did have one American, from Newport). I am not a big Larry Ellison fan but, almost against my will, I did find myself rooting for the American team. I like to think that it was because they are the underdogs at this point but, really, I think it was just because they have an American flag on their saily thing. Very strange.

By the way, the Americans won both races today so they have now tied the series after being behind by enough so that everybody thought they were dead. Who ever wins tomorrow will win the Cup. I can hardly wait to see it on TV.

Michele’s Cousin’s get together

September 21, 2013Americana, Family, Food and DrinkSteve Stern

When I was growing up. my family didn’t much talk about the Holocaust and I have since learned that, at the time, almost nobody did. Out of shame, I think. On the Jewish side, shame that they let the catastrophe – Shoah – happen to them (although, of course, they really didn’t). On the German’s side, shame that they had let themselves become such monsters (although, of course, not all of them were). On everybody’s else’s side, shame that they were passive bystanders (although, of course, in the end, they weren’t). However for much of Michele’s long lost, just found, family – collectively known as The Cousins – the Shoah was the center of their lives.

Michele’s father, Kurt, got out of Europe before the war with, apparently, the help of his – then -wife’s family. They bought him a ticket to the United States where he joined the US Army, watched Europe convulse from the safety of the Aleutian Islands, divorced, changed into a lapsed Catholic named Kurt von Henriksberg from Belgium, remarried, became a photographer and, then, an American success story as Kurt Heath, the developer. In the process, he left his family behind with his old life.

Michele grew up wondering why all of her Catholic father’s stories didn’t quite line up. So, after Kurt died and after she read and reread his self-written obituary, after she obtained his Social Security application and found out Kurt’s real name was Hoenigsberg, Michele went to the Internet. There she found a family tree that had a branch almost the same as the family Kurt talked about. One of the family, Fred Hilsenrath – in suspenders above – even lived nearby. Michele called him and to see if he was related to her father, while he doubted they were related, he invited us over for dinner (just like Kurt would have done). That was the first clue, the second was their matching accents, and the third was a picture that Claudia brought of their grandfather that was taken in Fred’s home town in Romania.

I had the honor of spending some time with this family at a get together organized by Fred and Michele’s sister, Claudia. In a curious way, I felt very much at home with them. Michele’s cousins give the impression of being closer to my father’s family of my childhood than they do to any part of Michele’s family that I have known.

There is an observational joke sometime attributed to Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, who said For every two Jews, there are three opinions. In many ways that is the core of the Jewish intellectual legacy. I have been told that it is much of what the Talmud is about and it seems to be the core of both this family and what I remember of my family growing up. Some of my fondest memories of my father – and mother, for that matter – are arguments. Arguments over Dred Scott v. Sandford or the desirability of a tram to the top of Mt. San Jacinto with my dad; here, arguments over Israel or affordable health care. There were more than two Jews at the reunion – and because this is a modern family, and much of it, a modern American family, there were more than just Jews – and many more than three opinions.