Boonarga Cactoblastis Memorial Hall

This place, 12 km ESE of Chinchilla, is the only building in Queensland that honors an insect.

In the 19th century, roughly 1843, a prickly-pear cactus (Opuntia stricta) was introduced here from South America. By the 1920's, dense thickets of inpenetrable cactus covered an area larger than the UK, destroying countless farms and becoming a major national crisis.

Alan Dodd travelled to both Americas, looking for a pest that would target just this cactus. He brought back the cochineal moth (cactoblastis catorium), whose larvae were released in 1926 by Queensland farmers from several locations.

The program was the most-successful pest-control program in world history. Begun in 1925, it was out-of-business by 1936, an absolute smashing success. Dodd became something of a national hero for his efforts to save Queensland agriculture.

Other pests remain, of course. Slowly spreading in the area even today, the three-pear prickly pear cactus......

Across The Darling Downs - Anti-Matter Arizona

I've been curious about the Darling Downs since I was a kid, having seen this curious blank spot midway down the east coast of Australia in the Reader's Digest Atlas of the World. Presumably it was an agricultural area, but what kind - sheepranching? cotton? millet?

Went to bed late, but got up early on Tuesday, and rode into Gatton with Andrew. After discussing a trip to Carnarvon Gorge National Park with Murray and Andrew, it seemed better to take three days instead of two - the distances were considerable. I borrowed the car, then off I went west, towards Toowoomba.

I stopped at Helidon and talked to a friendly gas station clerk. He had seen a television show about the construction of the transcontinental railroad through the Sierra Nevada in the 1860's, and we talked about that challenege - snow sheds, coolie labor, bankrupt railroads, and other fun stuff.

I drove up the steep escarpment of the Great Dividing Range, to Toowoomba, and I stopped to take pictures and fill out post cards. I ate lunch at the super Rooster and talked to a music teacher named Barbara Broom who plans to visit California in 2008.

Headed WNW on the Warrego Highway. The famous Jondaryan Woolshed was closed Tuesdays, so I went to the cemetery instead.

Vast cotton and wheat fields stretched from horizon to horizon, looking fallow, but maybe just in-between crops. On the distant low hills, battered-looking eucalyptus forests. Dalby, Chinchilla, Miles were the principal towns.

It looked a lot like open meadows in Northern Arizona, but the heat felt like Southern Arizona. In Toowoomba, the red brick and palm trees made me feel like I was in some kind of alternate-universe, mirror-image version of Tucson, Arizona. Interior Queensland was like an Anti-Matter Arizona. If the two regions were to actually meet, there'd be a huge explosion and they'd both annihilate each other.

Looking at the map, it looked as if population density slowly dwindled the farther you went west. I was unprepared for the reality: population density radically crashed west of McAlister, not far west of Chinchilla. Sedentary agriculture largely ended and ranching, mostly cattle, took over. The forest was back again here out west - a very arid-looking eucalyptus kind of forest, with some pines, but it looked as if stockmen had tinkered with it over the years, killing off trees in some areas, and parking cattle in others.

The maps did not readily express the sharp change. Given that the population of Toowoomba is about 100,000, and looking at the map, you'd guess the populations of the big towns were like this:

• Toowoomba - 100,000
• Dalby - 50,000
• Chinchilla - 30,000
• Miles - 10,000
• Roma - 50,000

The reality was more like:

• Toowoomba - 100,000
• Dalby - 30,000
• Chinchilla - 10,000
• Miles - 2,000
• Roma - 5,000

In addition, road quality deteriorated, so even this major, major highway was a just another bumpy, narrow two-lane kind of road. Speed limits are somewhat low (100 or 110 km/hr, which works out to about 62 and 68 mph) and rather well-enforced, so it always takes longer to get somewhere than you'd think necessary. Even if you'd want to speed, road quality discourages you from doing so. Plus, I was misjudging distances from the map - everyone uses kilometers, and the Australian road maps are larger-scale than their American counterparts - so, I kept getting surprised. And my directional instincts were crap anyway, with the sun in the northern sky, and with few landmarks.

Near Tchanning, I saw *something big* hopping across the road - my first kangaroo! - but also potential roadkill. Approaching Yuleba at sunset, I stopped to investigate a roadside field where I saw some strange animals - probably kangaroos - but the animals stole off in the gloaming.

Nearly out of petrol, I stopped at 7:30 p.m. in Roma, getting a room at the Quality Inn, a higher-end motel chain - still far from Carnarvon! Oddly, they asked me to fill out a breakfast menu and make a breakfast reservation. I was still wearing a DMTC T-shirt, but I changed into a different T-shirt, thinking that an obvious reference to musical theater might be a bad move in macho interior Queensland. Roma, 'The Gateway to the Outback' looked very empty - emptier than a town in Wyoming, for example. I ate a lamb dinner at their restaurant, also after they made a reservation for me (still traces of the old formalities here).

Roma looks big on a map, but in reality it's a little, vulnerable town on Bungil Creek, lost in the vastness wilderness of Interior Queensland. I'm not even close to the REAL Outback, either, where there are almost no people at all. Population density here is like the western U.S. around 1920 - not that many people! Picture interior Nevada, with fewer of the crowds.

"You Could Do Some Damage! You Sound Like A Wild Animal!" - Second Kylie Concert, November 20th








Took the Ferny Grove train to Bowen Hills. On board, a tall blond teenage girl with a school jacket and a very long skirt instructed another girl on the fine art of of rolling rubber balls (slightly larger than billiard balls) from the forearm, over the fingertips, to the back arm, and back again. They sat together and waved their arms in synchrony, with surflike rhythm. When they dropped the balls due to the train's motion, they fished the balls out from under the seats with a large, Q-Tip-like baton that seemed more suitable for martial arts. The baton apparently had a collapsible rod, so it could be changed in length. They also twirled a second baton. Cheerleading skills of some sort!

At Bowen Hills, someone on the train platform was smoking pot, and I saw a conductor wrinkle his nose in disgust. Despite clear warnings of a $150 fine, a teenage boy jumped down upon the tracks and ran across to the other platform, rather than using the elevated stairways across. Fortunately, there is no third rail: the lines are all above.

The Shorncliffe train took long to come, so we last several hundred Kylie stragglers barely made it to BEC in time. I quickly took my seat.

This time, I was seated directly in front of the stage, but towards the back of the arena. The seats were fine - the sound and the lights were directed along the axis of the arena, so the concert seemed louder and brighter than Saturday's had felt.

Excellent show - I thought better than the first.

















Kylie, as with Madonna, is experimenting with Arab themes - Madonna with her Yemenite influence, and Kylie with a Whirling Dervish motif. Madonna's is superior - nothing beats Yemenite music! Still, Madonna was also too repetitive. Kylie, in contrast, mixed scat singing with her song, in an excellent interpretation, better than Madonna's. So, Madonna has the better theme, but Kylie the better execution.

Various songs were excellent: 'Shocked,' for example, and the crowd went nuts over the classic, original Kylie hits: 'I Should Be So Lucky,' 'Put Your Hand On Your Heart,' etc.

At intermission, I talked to two teenage boys, one of whom was a longtime Kylie fan. They wondered whether I was one of these folks who follow their favorite pop star all around the world. I said no, and explained how Kylie doesn't perform in the U.S. (Andrew says the correct answer was 'yes, but I am just starting'). I raved about Australian wildlife and one boy said 'yes, but we are used to it.' I said that was human nature - they'd have a similar reaction if they went to the States. I also talked to the woman next to me, and a mom with daughter and friends in front (all wearing specially-made 'Team Kylie' T-Shirts).

unlike Madonna, Kylie places a section of her concert where she schmoozes with the audience. Her statements were mostly mundane this concert: she asked the audience to applaud two girls in particular (why is unclear - perhaps they had endeared themselves to her, or had serious life challenges of some sort). She welcomed (*) Martin from 'Coldplay,' and sang 'Happy Birthday' to her uncle Michael. Someone apparently barked at her from stageside so she said, "You Could Do Some Damage! You Sound Like A Wild Animal!"

After the show, I walked around behind BEC to waylay the star, but the guards there said she had left immediately after leaving the stage. The guards struck me as insincere, but perhaps they were right - after all, if you don't leave immediately, you have to deal with the traffic jam. I talked to a woman wearing a pink halo - I said it said something about herself.

On the train back to Bowen Hills, I talked to a very nice couple about the concert. She was wearing pink hair laced with stars just for the occasion. We both agreed that 'I Can't Get You Out Of My Head' was the strongest song of the evening.

After Ferny Grove, I filled up Andrew's vehicle with gas and drove back to Mt. Glorious, getting back at 1 a.m., earlier than I had on Saturday (1:40 a.m.).

Sunday, And Monday Afternoon

Relatively quiet days. On Sunday:

• Breakfast;
• read the weekend paper;
• midday tea;
• watched from the back deck as the kookaberra family and the currawong family squabbled over territory;
• watched parrots;
• hiked over to Greene's Falls;
• went wine tasting;
• ate Indian food in the evening.

On Monday, I went in to work to Gatton with Andrew, and blogged. At lunch, we drove into town and got some fish and chips, and picnicked at Apex Lake, while also feeding opportunistic water birds there. Returned to campus for more blogging. Late afternoon, I want to look for some of the scaly-breasted lorikeets - these parrots are SO cute! It's a pet store outside! But now, windy as well.

At U of Q Gatton Lake Lenore, saw:

• Magpie Goose;
• Purple Swamphen;
• and probably a Pacific Black Duck.

Eventful Ride Home

After the Kylie concert, I left late and lost my way to the train station. I caught the train to Bowen Hills quite late.

At the train station, I encountered a Happy, Drunk Lady. She was about 55, and completely schnockered. She asked three girls on the opposite platform if they had cigarette machine there. Misunderstanding, she said 'what, a titty machine? Where?' She wandered off to scrounge a cigarette, and returned. I was bending over to get a Diet Coke from a vending machine, and she made as if to spank me. When I opened the soda, she grabbed it as her own (so I had to get another). Very, very funny, and very entertaining! Fortunately, she had understanding friends to guide her home.

At Bowen Hills, I caught the train back to Ferny Grove. On the train, a fellow in a yellow-and-green rugby jacket, and his girl friend, both dozed. I wondered who had won the big rugby game that evening. I moved closer, hoping to ask, if circumstances allowed.

At Enogerra station, an emergency radio message was clearly audible. There had been an accident at Ferny Grove, and we were supposed to get off instead at Keperra station, where buses would take us to Ferny Grove. The rugby fellow and his girl friend both awoke.

I approached and asked "did Great Britain or Brisbane win today's game?" The girl friend corrected: "Australia defeated Great Britain" (I later learned the score was 33 - 10). The fellow, somewhat sarcastically, asked "do you know where you are?" I cheerily answered "Barely!" He asked, concealing disappointment, "you're an American, aren't you?" I answered yes. Girl friend said, "oh, we've seen many international folks today - Germans, Czechs, etc." I continued, "you see, when I flew into Brisbane on Wednesday, I flew in with the Great Britain rugby team." Rugby guy answered, "then you must have felt right at home." I said, "no, rather...."

He interrupted: "Listen! I hate Poms (*) and I hate Yanks, the two most loser nations in the world!" Girl friend said "hush, don't be rude." At that point I broke off the conversation He then began muttering all kinds of venomous anti-American things to the girl friend, amongst which I heard the name George Bush mentioned.

At Keperra station, as we exited to the buses, I asked the conductor what had happened. He said, "I don't know, mate. I do know it was a fatality. It happens, sometimes." "A fatality!" I gasped.

At Ferny Grove, as we exitted, a City Train employee asked the Rugby Dude how he was. Rugby Dude said "I've been better." I asked the employee what had happened. He shook his head and said "lady threw herself in front of a train."

Then I drove back to Mt. Glorious to get some needed sleep.


(*) I asked Andrew where the nickname Pom (adjective Pommie) came from for the British. He suggested, ironically considering rude, insular Aussies, that the nickname comes from the French, for pom d'terres - roughly, potato-eaters.

"Bris-Vegas, You Didn't Let Me Down!" - First Kylie Concert, November 18, 2006











I entered the chaotic crowd and bought a hot dog and a soda for $7.50 AU. I sat down next to two teenage girls, Emma and Steph, who were Kylie enthusiasts. I asked if BEC was the biggest rock venue in Brisbane, and they said no, Suncorp Stadium was bigger. Then they asked if I was new in Brisbane. When I explained I was from California, they were very impressed!

Kylie's eyelids were heavily-weighted with makeup, making her look sleepy.

The first act of Kylie's show seemed slow, cautious: the second act was much better, and the dancers were much more daring. In Sydney, Kylie had appeared with U2's Bono, but he didn't appear here. I was given to understand (maybe incorrectly) that the dancers in Kylie's new song 'White Diamond' were the Scissor Sisters (I suspect is that the Scissor Sisters collaborated on the new song, but weren't actually present). Kylie covered one full verse of Madonna's 'Vogue', confirming pre-concert rumors.

I instantly recognized Kylie's trick dancer, the fellow who did 'Confide To Me' on the 2002 Manchester concert video. He did all kinds of flips! Musicians Andrew Smalls and Steve Tyler were evident as well.







Kylie covers Madonna's "Vogue."









At intermission, I got in trouble with the authorities. I had brought Steve and Jan's gift, the digital voice recorder, in order to tape the concert, so I could remember the song order. A harsh voice behind me said "that looks like a digital voice recorder," a clear copyright infringement, apparently. I lamely explained that I had lost the instructions and had forgotten how to make it work. The fellow called his boss and they skeptically listened to the recorder to verify that I had told the truth, and returned it with an order to put it away. I asked if photography was a copyright infringement, and the fellow said no, "within reason."

Kylie had three - four? - encores to satisfy the roaring applause. Kylie did a favorite thing, pointing out people in the audience for special mention for their campy wear, particularly highlighting one girl who, for the evening, wore the white hoodlike wrap that Kylie wore in the 2002 video 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head.' Kylie said "Bris-Vegas, You Didn't Let Me Down!" (people here call the city Bris-Vegas when it gets very hot, but Kylie meant the city was hot, in a second, sexy sense - nothing works like flattery, as they say!) Kylie also thanked the audience for their patience and sang 'Especially For You,' in commemoration.

Afterwards, I bought a bag, two programs, and two T-Shirts for a shocking cost of $135 AU. Then I bought an ice cream cone for $4.50 AU, but the girl got distracted, thinking I had given her $20 when I had given her $5, and gave me back $15. Normally, I would have called her attention to it, but feeling a bit stripped already, I pocketed the change.

Mt. Nebo, and South Bank Of The Brisbane River

Left: Geodesic dome at Mt. Coot-tha Botanical Gardens, Brisbane.


On Saturday, we took the mountain crest road south, through Mt. Nebo, where Bellbirds were making a huge dinging racket. We stopped at Jolly's Lookout and saw kookaburras and scenic vistas, then continued south. Something about the Shiraz the night before, and the winding mountain roads mixed, and soon I urgently asked Andrew to stop at the side of the road, for a personal upchuck moment. Wobbly, but nevertheless feeling better, we continued on to Camp Mountain, Brisbane Forest Park HQ, and Mount Coot-tha Botanical Gardens.

Left: The City, Brisbane, as seen from Mt. Coot-tha


Afterwards, we went to the South Bank of the Brisbane River, and ate fish and chips at one of the touristy cafes there. We walked around, looked at the new public beach area there, shopped at the various concessions stalls, and explored the river's edge.

Afterwards, we drove above the riverside cliffs, to Kangaroo Point, and tried to enter the fairly new (2003) Mormon Church there. A man dressed in immaculate white waved us off, so we briefly entered a public meeting hall before returning to Mt. Glorious.

In the evening, I drove Andrew's vehicle to the nearest train station to Mt. Glorious, at Ferny Grove, and caught the train into the city. Then, at Bowen Hills, I caught the Shorncliffe train to Boondall, the closest station to the Brisbane Entertainment Centre (BEC), in the suburbs near the airport, where Kylie Minogue would perform that night.

Everyone in the crowded train car was in festive mood. One set of teenagers asked another to take their photo - "we're from the country," they explained. At one point, one of the teenagers asked everyone to hold up their hands if they were going to the Kylie concert. Even though it was clear from the nightclub style of dress everyone sported that 80 - 90% were concertgoers, only three held up their hands, which just made everyone laugh. Then, at Boondall, hundreds exited from the train, joining thousands more at BEC.

BEC appeared to be about the size of ARCO Arena in Sacramento, and the place was jammed.

Learning To Drive On The Left - The Drive To Toowoomba, And Back

Left: Monument to a mascot named "Puppy" - Picnic Point, Toowoomba.


Andrew said, "why don't you borrow my vehicle and drive to someplace nice?" The moment-of-truth had arrived: learning how to drive on the left! They suggested Toowoomba, which had been in the international news lately regarding its hugely-controversial (and ultimately defeated) measure to reuse sewage water for drinking purposes (yes, the drought here is really that bad!)

Australian highways are very American-like, except mirror-like of course. They are signed in the metric system, not English system, and most of the signs are different: 'Give Way' instead of 'Yield', for example. The turn signals are on the right, so I frequently-turned the windshield wipers on instead when I had to use them, but fortunately the foot pedals are the same.

I tried to drive 80 km/hr on the Highway to Toowoomba at first, but that was too slow, even for the trucks: 100 suited the traffic better. At all times, I worried about my instincts: I was deathly afraid of thoughtlessly following U.S. driving patterns and becoming a hazard.

I drove up the escarpment of the Great Dividing Range to Toowoomba, passing a few interesting roadside establishments (e.g., a convenience market that also offered wedding gowns, a sign saying 'Fuel Fruit', and various places offering 'pokies' - video poker machines). Stopped at scenic Picnic Point. Walked through the woods there filled with kookaburras.

Left: View from the escarpment at Picnic Point, showing small fires in the distance.


Then, after a brief period lost on the city streets, I returned the back way, taking the Helidon exit through the town of Gatton, and stopped off at beautiful Apex Lake and Bird Sanctuary.

Returned intact! Whew!

Afterwards, Andrew introduced me to one of the other professors there, who produced a celebratory bottle of Shiraz. Later that night, the two of us polished the bottle off.

University of Queensland, Gatton

Left: Liz Quinn, who, among her many duties, directs community musical theater in the Brisbane area - "The Sound Of Music" at the moment, and "Oliver!" early next year. She was born in a Nazi concentration camp: her parents kept sane by staging theatrical skits with other prisoners.


On Friday, I went into work with Andrew, as Head of the Centre for Pesticide Application and Safety, University of Queensland, Gatton. We drove down the west slope of the D'Aguilar Mountains, through the beautiful, exotic-looking forest down into the Shire of Esk, along the shores of Brisbane's principal water reservoir, Lake Wivenhoe, and across the farming district of Fernvale and Lowood, passing termite mounds and schoolies arriving by bus for class, before arriving at the college station.

Andrew said he gets only 17,000 km per set of tires, which I found dumbfounding at first, but understood better when I saw how quickly he travelled the winding mountain roads. Andrew has, or has had, homes in America - Lake Tahoe, Missouri, Florida - and relatives in Britain - and so, has interests on three continents.

Left: Wind tunnel facility at the University of Queensland, Gatton.


These days, Gatton is a satellite campus of the big University of Queensland St. Lucia campus, at Brisbane. In WWII the U.S. commandeered the campus for a hospital for convalescing soldiers. I met Liz Quinn, Murray Byrnes, and Chris O'Donnell. I visited the wind tunnel facility with Murray, and Chris showed me the mouse and sewage treatment research facilities.

We ate at the campus dining hall, and, when I got lost upon my return, I was escorted back to the Centre for Pesticide Application and Safety by a campus safety officer, decked out in his official, black cowboy-like hat, and shorts (Sherlock-Holmes-like, he said my confusion was obvious, despite my efforts to hide it).

Tappy, The Most Determined Bird On Mt. Glorious

Whee-ooo-wheet! Whee-ooo-whee-ooo-whee-ooo-wheet!

Every morning, and often every afternoon, Tappy, Andrew's nemesis, flutters and taps against the windows of Andrew's home. Tappy is captivated by his reflection, probably mistaking the image for another bird, but sometimes Tappy flutters before dawn, suggesting that his behavior is now compulsive.

It's not clear what kind of bird Tappy is. He's very pretty, with his yellow breast - I'm guessing a Rufous Whistler.

Andrew once captured Tappy and drove him 30 miles from home. Andrew had a day of peace, before Tappy flew the way back and began tapping again.

Whee-ooo-wheet! Whee-ooo-whee-ooo-whee-ooo-wheet!

Mount Glorious

Left: A cold Carpet Python hugs the rock for warmth.


Andrew answered the call: turned out, the airport authorities wouldn't let him park in front of the terminal, making him circle about. I was very happy to see him!

We drove across the semi-tropical northern suburbs of Brisbane towards the D'Aguilar Mountains, and his home on the crest, at Mt. Glorious. I take great pride in my navigational ability, but I was confused. I thought we were driving south, but it was west: the trouble was, as in all places in the Southern Hemisphere, the sun was in the northern sky, off to the right. There had been recent rains, so the city had greened up from its wintertime dowdy brown (both Brisbane and Sacramento have rains from November - April, but that's winter in Sacramento, but summer here).

The drive was scary - everyone drives on the left here - and it was especially frightening on the mountain curves, where it appeared as if accidents were always imminent.

Beautiful, beautiful mountain home, in the open, deciduous Australian forest! We checked out the rain barrels when we arrived. Everyone here collects rain on the roof, stores it big barrels, and filters it for household use - there is no water service in the mountains, or, for that matter, in the farming areas either (groundwater apparently being unreliable). The roof water is good enough to drink, but many prefer to buy drinking water for actual drinking. He also has a gray water system, taking wash water for sprinkling over landscaping. There is also a septic system for toilet water. This tripartite system is very common in Australia, is subsidized by the government, and is absolutely vital, given the droughts that Australia is frequently subject too.

The wildlife here is amazing! We watched two of Andrew's favorite kookaburras tending their nest just outside the back deck. This area is one of the homelands for a variety of parrot species. The parrots haven't been coming close, but they make such a racket in the tree tops, squawking and muttering to themselves, that the forest sounds like a pet store. I've seen Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos and Crimson Rosellas not far away, and seen Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos and Galahs from the distance. The Bell Miners, called Bellbirds, can be heard with their distinctive bell sound in many places. Australian Magpies and Pied Currawongs are common everywhere.

We took a small drive to the village of Mt. Glorious, and bought honey and trinkets. We took a walk down a mountain trail. On the way back, we saw a snake hiding under a rock, but it wasn't clear where it's head was. I decided to touch it, to see if there was a reaction. Andrew stepped back: "It looks like a python - non-poisonous, but no guarantees!" I touched the snake, and felt its skin quiver, but there was no other reaction - the weather was really too cold for snakes, and their reflexes were greatly-dulled.

Sydney To Brisbane

Left: Downtown Sydney, as seen from our landing aircraft. The famed Opera House is visible on the left edge of downtown.


The flight got bumpy passing through the clouds near Sydney, where a massive cold front from Antarctica had just passed, and where it was still raining. The plane came in from the east, looped over Botany Bay and the Sydney suburbs (many swimming pools down there) and came in from the north, passing downtown, and landing beside famous Botany Bay.

As it turned out, I arrived in Sydney on a landmark day: the coldest November 16th in one hundred years! High winds, rainfall, and snowfall were occurring all across the region - shockingly late in the season!

Debarkation put me in the duty-free shopping zone. I saw a sign saying 'Tourist Refund Scheme', which sounded like a big conspiracy, but since I was a tourist, and could use a refund, I immediately sought out the office, asking them to explain who they were. Turns out, if you buy a large amount of goods ($500 AU or more, if I remember rightly), you could get a refund on the taxes involved (all very confusing). I bought several things in the duty-free zone and waited for the connecting flight to Brisbane.

The duty-free area of the airport sported big signs warning of the dangers of cigarettes, but none at all about the dangers of alcohol, which was also being sold in vast quantities.

I boarded the crowded Boeing 767 for the flight to Brisbane, and sat next to the Great Britain Rugby Team, heading to Brisbane for a weekend match. They were difficult to talk to: thick, lower-class British accents. Their time spent not listening to I-Pods was spent bopping each other on the heads with newspapers. The fellow next to me said he wasn't worried about the upcoming match: "yeah, well be all right!"

"Spot of Tea?" the stewardess asked, before handing me a box. The box had a cherry muffin in it - the tea followed later (the serving crew was harried because of the short duration of the flight).

The eastern coast of Australia was socked in with clouds, but sometimes you could see beaches, green grazing land, river valleys, small cities, and other features. The Gold Coast was laced with canals, and as we approached Brisbane, big beaches, green and brown colored water signifying shallows and river sediments, and in the distance, forest-fire smoke, were all in evidence.

As we came into the flat, sunny, mangrove-laced coast for landing, the aircraft wobbled in the turbulence generated by the high winds. As we debarked, the British Rugby team began mocking the way Australians speak: "G'day, mate! G'day mate!" they said. They seemed like a nice enough bunch of blokes, but still, I wished that when Saturday came around, they'd get a good taste of Australian mud.

I was beginning to get a bit scattered, after travelling so much. The exit interview was odd - the hippie-like fellow wanted to know where I was staying, but he was nice: he explained, in the event of a disease outbreak on the plane, they had to know how to find me fast.

My arrangement with Andrew was to meet on the departing flights upper level of the International Terminal, but no one was there. Suddenly I felt very alone and very vulnerable: as far from home as I'd ever been, stranded on a distant Pacific coast, on a very windy day, in a near-empty airport terminal.

Across The Wide Pacific

Left: South Pacific sunrise, north of Nadi


Emergency procedures were explained, focusing a lot on water evacuation procedures. We were handed a free packet of conveniences that seemed to be quite odd: a pair of socks, what may have been a tampon, some kind of multi-strapped thang, out of which one might be able to fashion a really lame eyepatch - the sleeping mask said to be there wasn't - but I liked the carrying case, so I kept it.

I had determined beforehand not to eat onboard: no use challenging the digestive system trapped in an aluminum tube, but as soon as we were airbone, a delicious meal was served and my resolve collapsed:

• Chicken with rice and peppers;
• mixed salad with ranch dressing;
• biscuit with butter;
• maccaroon (which I skipped); and,
• coffee and hot chocolate.

quickly followed up by a snack pack with:

• chocolate chip cookies;
• potato chips;
• mints; and,
• water.

I am loving this!

Interestingly, the serving crew is entirely male: the only females are serving business class passengers.

My plan to sleep across the Pacific was foiled when the fellow in the seat in front of me came into the aisle seat in my row, so as to allow his elderly mother to sleep. Tried to sleep but couldn't. Eventually, she awakened (mother & son were from South Carolina and were on Eastern time), so about 5 a.m. California time, her son took my hint and allowed me to lie down. I got about three hours of sleep. I dreamed about various anxieties - Sparky getting eaten by a dog, etc.

Some turbulence started when we made our closest approach to the Hawaiian Islands (about 700 miles??) Turbulence continued all across the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Mysterious plane movement: our elevation increased abruptly from 11,000 to 11,600 meters, and we jogged directly south about 100 miles, north of Nadi, about 1/3 the way to the equator. We passed directly over New Caledonia, north of Naamea. Temperatures dropped all during the flight, from -31 deg F near Hawaii to near -59 deg F near Australia, but after Walt's experience recently, I don't trust these measurements. Surprisingly little turbulence near Australia - maybe the high elevation was a good thing, preventing us from effects of the big cold front.

The in-flight entertainment center had many options - radio, movies, where we were on the globe, etc. Some options weren't that appetizing: a show explaining how to make cricket bats - what kind of wood to choose, how to cut it, etc. - struck me as too technical. They did have Kylie's last 'Showgirl' concerts before she took ill, and so I watched that avidly, looking for things of interest. I was struck by the fast pace (althought that may have been editing). They also had an in-flight duty-free shopping option for high-end goods.

Breakfast was an egg omelette-type thing, sausage, muffin, coffee, and orange slices.

I'm just loving this!

Departure

Frantic efforts to get ready undermined by work tasks. Spastic packing.

Took Sparky to Steve & Jan. Only quiet growling from Mrs. Lovett.

E. took me to airport Tuesday evening. At the airport, we practiced how to leave the airport, so as to minimize confusion after I left.

Flew Southwest 1645 to LAX. Sacramento, Modesto, and the cities of the Central were in a clear, warm, sodium glow. Strangely, and in contrast, LA was in a warm sodium haze. The Boeing 737 crossed the coast near Malibu, turned east, and passed over a very metallic, futuristic, science-fiction looking downtown LA, before making a U-turn and landing from the east at LAX.

Sixty or eighty polyglot airlines there - Air New Zealand, Thai Air, American, US Air, etc., and in the distance, a kangaroo on a 747's tail fin, signifying Qantas. Got off at Terminal 1.

Passenger pickup at LAX a frantic bowling lane full of limousines and buses and various vehicles. Crazy. Took Bus A to Terminal 4.

The World's Most Undisciplined Packer entered the bus. Two ginormous suitcases! Labels in bright orange said 'HEAVY.'

Qantas corner of terminal very quiet, behind ridiculously-packed San Salvador Airlines. The World's Most Undisciplined Packing Couple stood in line in front of me. Bright orange labels on their three ginormous suitcases instructed Qantas personnel to bend their knees before lifting the suitcases.

Suddenly a steely-eyed man in full dress uniform cut in front of me. Omigod! The Pilot! I caught his eye: he hesitated. "G'day, mate," he said, in an accent as broad and flat as Australia's Outback. Later, he and the co-pilot and the navigator formed a trio as they approached the gate, chins up, stride purposeful and confident. There are times when these little displays of determination can be overdone, but under the circumstances, about to undertake a journey across the vast Pacific, it was immensely-comforting. These appeared to be exactly the right kind of people you wanted in charge if trouble developed.

Baffled by the security ropes - I was reprimanded for trying to duck under a barrier. At the gate, the 747's nose stuck in the window like 'Silver Streak.'

Aisle seat 61-C was near the 747's galley. Aussie in the window seat, said "Tuesday night flight half-empty." Continuing, he said the regulars had their eyes open waiting for opportunities. Lifting an armrest, and pointing to the empty seats in front of me, he said, with raised eyebrows, "best way is to put your bag on the seat in front of you." I got it! Instead of sleeping in a sitting position, and even though I'm flying economy-class, I can lay down and sleep across the Pacific on this overnight flight! The joy!

Australian Hiatus


Characteristic hand gesture suggests Kylie's singing "It's In Your Eyes", from the European 'Showgirl' tour.

Off to the Antipodes! I will endeavor to blog, but there are no guarantees - it may be sporadic. Pictures will likely have to wait until I return.

This time of year, I believe Queensland is 18 hours ahead of Sacramento (which sometimes works out as 6 hours behind and 1 day ahead). So, if it's 8 p.m. Sunday in Sacramento, it's 2 p.m. Monday in Brisbane. Note that Brisbane and Sydney are one hour apart (Queensland doesn't go on daylight savings time, unlike Victoria and New South Wales). Since I'm such a night owl here in California, in Queensland, I'll be an early bird! Coming back, I'm sure I'll be seriously screwed up with jet lag, but that's the price to pay! This world clock is helpful.

The time zone change is weird - like the twilight zone. Formally, it takes about 41 hours to fly there, and two hours to get back. I'll be taking three flights in quick succession to get there (SMF to LAX: LAX to SYD: SYD to BNE), and two back (BNE to LAX: LAX to SMF). The actual trans-Pacific flighttime is about 14 1/2 hours. The weather forecast looks great almost all the way across, but with the chance of some of the normal storminess to be expected in the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ; 10 degrees north of the equator), and also there will be a cold front just east of Australia that may provide some significant bumpiness as we fly in.

Welcomes

I'm paging through the book "Cook - The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook", by Nicholas Thomas (Walker & Co., New York, 2003), checking on how the Australian Aborigines welcomed the 'discoverer' of Australia, Captain James Cook:

Cook and his men had experienced a variety of tense and pleasurable encounters in Tahiti and around New Zealand and were ready to resisted or greeted, but not all prepared to be ignored. They were bewildered by the indifference of people who ought to have been awed and astonished by the unprecedented spectacle of a British ship.

... Cook saw another indigenous group, who fled. He landed at places people had just left. He, Solander, and Tupaia tried to follow others, but they kept walking away. Still others were sighted 'who made off as soon as they saw us'. One officer met with a couple of old people and two children. He tried to give them a bird that he had shot, which they refused. On returning to the shelters that they had first visited, the mariners found, moreover, that the ribbons and trinkets left on or by the bark hut had not been touched.

Cantankerous Boomer

Getting tired of the pretenses and the posers:

I'm supposed to be inspired by the free spirits of women my age who are joyfully running their first marathons, getting Ph.D.s in Klingon studies, starting wineries in the Loire Valley or rebelliously letting their hair go gray. But if they were really like me, they still wouldn't know what to do with their hair, whatever its color, or even have a favorite brand of pantyhose yet. It's doubtful, too, that like me they're still getting most of their sustenance in the candy aisle at CVS.

The. Worst. Political. Analogy. Ever.

Between Pop Singer Kylie Minogue and Australian Prime Minister John Howard:

In a column in today's Australian newspaper, Mr Howard was said to be trying to emulate the pop diva's music in his leadership by being "safe and predictable".

... "If the Australian people believe that the Government I lead has given them a sense of safety and predictability, well I'm not ashamed of that," Mr Howard told ABC radio in Sydney.

... While Mark Juddery's column drew some uncomplimentary parallels between Mr Howard and Minogue - including their shared lack of innovation - the Prime Minister was far from offended by the comparison.

"I'm certainly not offended, I'm flattered," he said.

"She's a very popular, talented entertainer and I'm a - I hope - safe, predictable, serious, committed prime minister."

The analogy ended when program host Virginia Trioli promised not to make any gags about Minogue's signature gold hot pants.

"I think that's wise," Mr Howard said.

Making Sense Of The Election

Politics always generates mixed metaphors and strange analogies:

Republicans must resolve their own questions: Can they reconstitute conservatism to make it attractive once again beyond the party's base? GOP strategist Mary Matalin said the Reaganite model of low taxes, smaller government and strong defense can again serve the party well, if it is updated. "It needs to put some Britney Spears clothes on it," she said.

Like, a bare midriff with a cute belly-button ring? Won't necessarily appeal to the Christina Aguileras of the world. Does it matter that it would be the same old message - "Baby, One More Time" - rather than something distinctly new? Keep that rumored sex tape far, far away! And who takes the place of K-Fed?

Mexican Cuisine, And The Law

What some people ask judges to decide .... Equivocal progress on the frontier of American jursiprudence:

Is a burrito a sandwich?

The Panera Bread Co. bakery-and-cafe chain says yes. But a judge said no, ruling against Panera in its bid to prevent a Mexican restaurant from moving into the same shopping mall.

Panera has a clause in its lease that prevents the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury from renting to another sandwich shop. Panera tried to invoke that clause to stop the opening of an Qdoba Mexican Grill.

... The difference, the judge ruled, comes down to two slices of bread versus one tortilla.

... Qdoba, owned by San Diego-based Jack in the Box Inc., called food experts to testify on its behalf.

Among them was Cambridge chef Chris Schlesinger, who said in an affidavit: "I know of no chef or culinary historian who would call a burrito a sandwich. Indeed, the notion would be absurd to any credible chef or culinary historian."

Food safety regulation is also an untapped vein for humor. There was story several years ago in the press regarding the bureaucrats at the European Union in Brussels worried about plastic bananas, and whether they could be confused for the real things by infants. What they failed to understand was the plastic bananas in question were seven feet long. Even the most addled infants wouldn't confuse these fakes for the real things, but the distinction seemed to be eluding the bureaucrats.

Frat House Pledge Week?

Or a musical gone awry?:

Campus police and administrators are investigating possible hazing at the frat house on Oct. 26. According to police, a caller heard profane screaming, sobbing and moaning coming from the house. Police said they found pledges crawling on their hands and knees and wearing pink fairy wings, a rainbow-colored wing and a diaper, a striped prison uniform, a pink tank top, women's underwear and a blonde wig.

Scrambling

My trip starts tomorrow, but I have still to pack. I had hoped to buy some new clothes, shoes, and what-not, but I can see I'll run out of time, so I'll just keep on keepin' on. Still some straggling home repair going on. Probably have to suspend that till December. Still have to wash the rabbit and the dog. Steve and Jan have offered to take Sparky for the interim, and I'll likely take them up on that (provided it's OK with Mrs. Lovett). The workplace stuff is still a pile of craziness, and Wei will have to deal with that. I'll be a sleepless shambles, but at least trapped in an airline seat, suspended 7 miles above the middle of the Pacific Ocean, expectations are low.

Brilliant Pigeons

Pigeons are team-players:

In two recent studies, scientists discovered the common pigeon is astonishingly sophisticated, having an amazing long-term memory and the ability to make group decisions based on different sets of conditions.

... In the same study, detailed today in the journal Current Biology, the scientists showed that birds flying in pairs took more efficient routes home than those flying alone, suggesting that traveling in numbers brings navigational benefits to individual group members.

Shakespeare On The Potomac

Columnist Andrew Sullivan mixes Shakespeare and Freud to conjure the most interesting analysis of the recent election to date:

Last week the American people forced the family intervention. They knew what they were doing. If you combine W’s shrewdness with Poppy’s wisdom you might have the beginning of a new day in world politics. This Shakespearean drama is not over. We have merely finished Act IV. W has two more years. The Democrats will force him to move domestically to the centre, and Daddy’s team will not abandon the son in his hour of need. Their price was Rumsfeld’s head, and they now have it on a platter.

Clarifying The Law

The City Attorney Brad Jerbic won the case, but seems surprised by the spin on the victory. "The ordinance never banned lap dances," Jerbic says. Yes, but the Las Vegas law bans the sort of things one would expect in a lap dance. So, the spin seems justified.

So, what now? Will the Las Vegas economy collapse? Will the lure of the forbidden start a boom?

Anniversary

November 11, 1988: Sacramento first becomes acquainted with one of its more-colorful citizens, Dorothea Puente.

Oliver! Opening Night

Friday night was nice - full of strange surprises, though:

Ate dinner with Sally Forment at Morrison's in Woodland. Nice lamb sirloin. Never suspected this nice restaurant co-exists in the same town as Sonic (apologies to Sonic's ex-manager Eric - come back from Yuba City!)

The show was nice...a little ponderous at times, with some confusion in "Consider Yourself," but certainly better than many opening nights. The audience really like Brian and Monique! Blake Thomas is winning as Oliver and Chris Petersen energetically carries the show forward as The Artful Dodger.

At intermission, word came that none of the toilets worked, and indeed, no water was available in the theater at all. Trouble! So, several of us amateur sleuths spent the top of Act II staring at the befuddling circuitry for the New Theater pumps and trying to figure out why they had stopped working. Fagin himself came up and (without glasses) tried puzzling through the Owner's Manuals. Eventually, we succeeded in figuring out where the manual override switches were, and restored the water system.

Why the pumps stopped is a mystery. I suppose it's possible everyone flushed a toilet at the same instant and the pumps lost their prime, but why it hasn't happened before, I don't know.

Fred Brooks, a long-time Season Ticket holder, had a plan. Brooks, who years ago established the Parks, Recreation, and Community Services Department for the City of Davis, and now lives in retirement in Chico, wanted to honor Steve and Jan Isaacson for their dedication in establishing Community Theater in Davis. At the end of the show, we stopped the proceedings, and Fred Brooks presented his gorgeous plaque to honor Steve and Jan. The presentation had added impact because it was totally unexpected.

Brooks said:

It's very important to honor people for their hard work while they are still alive to appreciate it. Words of appreciation don't do much good after people die.

That's an excellent philosophy! Say "thank you" to the people around you today!

Oliver! Opens Tonight

Some pictures from dress rehearsal Thursday evening for tonight's opening at DMTC.

"I Shall Scream!" - Mr. Bumble (Brian McCann) and Widow Corney (Monique McKisson).

"Boy for Sale" - (Dan Petersen), Mr. Bumble (Brian McCann), and Oliver (Blake Thomas).

"That's Your Funeral" - Mr. Sowerberry (Mike Elfant), Oliver (Blake Thomas), and Mrs. Sowerberry (Dannette Vassar): Mr. Bumble (Brian McCann) in background.

"Pick-a-Pocket" - Fagin (Steve Isaacson).

Davis Chamber of Commerce Mixer

Thursday night..... Nice! Lots of people got to see the theater. Talked to J. P. Rai and Jon Fenske.

Angelic Spam, Devilish Spam

Lately, I've been getting Vietnamese art gallery spam. What a good idea! I mean, if you are getting unsolicited E-Mail, it may as well be something nice to look at....

I just got this spam E-Mail:

Show Your Devotion...Get Christian Ringtones. Personalize Your Cell Phone With Divine Inspiration!

Choose from categories like these:

- Gospel
- Pop
- Praise & Worship
- Acoustic
- And Many Others!

I suppose it could be Christian pop music they are referring to, but I suspect they put the pop category in there because they know I worship at the altar of Kylie, pop star goddess. Kylie's image was part of that pop-star Christmas nativity scene two years ago that the Vatican condemned and that even struck me as blasphemous, so I suppose worshipping Kylie is close to devil worship, but hey, it's commerce, and these days, religion never gets in the way of money. Besides, as William Baker points out in his book, "La, La, La," pop star worship has much in common with religious worship.

One cult I shy away from is the cell phone cult. I see people muttering away on the sidewalk like lunatics all day long. Better to communicate with art gallery spam. Or Kylie spam. I get a little of that too, as the image above attests, but they are offering Kylie ringtones for sale. Ringtones are the devil's work. Maybe I should get an I-Pod? That's the devil's work too, but it's better to sing into the void rather than mutter away like a lunatic.

The Usual Suspects

From The Onion:

Republicans Blame Election Losses on Democrats

Vogue?

Remarkable, if true. Kylie has never done a Madonna cover, previously preferring to avoid vampirish Madonna like hantavirus. But it is timely, Kylie having guest-edited December's Vogue Australia, and there were signs during last year's European 'Showgirl' tour that the two pop stars had worked out a rapprochement, so we'll see.

The rumour that appears to have the biggest wings (so much so that it has made it into the US press) is the one in which Kylie will be performing a cover version of Madonna's 'Vogue', complete with dance routine. Already causing a furore amongst Madonna fans (Kylie and Madonna fans love a good bicker about their respective Queens of Pop), we're not at liberty to give away ANY facts about the show, as we all know there's nowt positive to be gained from spoilers, but rest assured that Showgirl has received one hell of a makeover!

Why Change Might Come

Because it is finally in Congress' interest to make it happen:

This election was about Iraq. Period. The exit polls may have listed corruption pretty high. Mike Pence may think that Republicans lost because they didn’t cut Medicaid enough. But they lost because of Iraq. And it was a stunning, two-by-four-to-the-face rebuke to what is generously known as Bush’s Iraq policy. Yes, it could have been worse for the GOP. But the mere fact that so many of these “safe” districts were close was itself a rebuke of the current Iraq policy.

... But the election will affect things for the better and for a very specific reason – the election has finally aligned politics and policy. In other words, the election has created political incentives for legislators to demand and implement change. Better policy is now politically rational, and sticking to bad policy is politically irrational.

To take a step back, I’ve developed a very cynical view of the motivations of our elected officials. I see them as purely rational actors. Everything that they do (as opposed to what they say) is motivated solely by the hopes of political benefit or the fear of political harm. Morals, patriotism, and other abstract concepts have no explanatory power in my world. If you want politicians to fix something, then you make them fear not fixing it. If you want to them to stop doing something, you make them fear not stopping it.

... Early in the summer of 2006, the magnitude of the failures in Iraq was even clearer than in 2004. ... But rather than do anything to try to force the administration to change, they all adopted the Super Genius’s strategy to run on “stay the course” in Iraq. That is, until the Democrats – in the move that won them the election – flipped it back on them. The cynicism of this initial strategy was breathtaking, and borders on black comedy. But it wasn’t irrational. At that moment, their inaction had only been rewarded. It had never been punished.

That’s why it’s a bit rich to hear poor Susan Collins moaning that the mean ol’ Democrats attacked “Linc” too hard. Susan Collins – sitting atop an important oversight committee – hasn’t lifted a finger in four years to demand accountability. Susan Collins has done precisely nothing to stop a policy that she surely knows is an absolute and complete failure. And neither have the rest of them. But again, you can’t really put all the blame on them. The voters didn’t make this sort of outrageousness a political liability.

Until yesterday.

And that’s what so great about it. In the grand scheme of things, what’s really important is not so much that the Democrats won, but how they won. By frontally attacking the GOP on “stay the course,” they made staying the course a political liability....

The bottom line is that, because of yesterday’s elections, legislators now have political incentives to change the course. It is rational for them to demand change. We no longer have to rely on their morals, or their reason, or their regard for the troops. We can rely on their desire to save their own ass, which is the best guarantee we can possibly have.

And you’re going to see this dynamic in the Senate too. Don’t think that this bloc of Southern Senators facing re-election in 2008 didn’t get a chill up their spine when the press declared Webb the winner. If a political nobody can beat a popular former governor and presidential candidate over Iraq in a Southern state, then they can get beat too. And they know it – and so they too will demand change.

Darl

Kylie launches a fragrance:

KYLIE Minogue's new perfume will be known as Darling around the world, but in Australia she expects people to call it just "Darl".

Handy Engineering Conversions

Via E-Mail chain:

Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter: Eskimo Pi
2000 pounds of Chinese soup: Won ton
1 millionth of a mouthwash: 1 microscope
Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement: 1bananosecond
Weight an evangelist carries with God: 1 billigram
Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour: Knot-furlong
365.25 days of drinking low-calorie beer because it's less filling: 1 lite year
16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone: 1 Rod Serling
Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon
1000 aches: 1 kilohertz
Basic unit of laryngitis: 1 hoarsepower
Shortest distance between two jokes: A straight line (think about it for a moment)
453.6 graham crackers: 1 pound cake
1 million microphones: 1 megaphone
1 million bicycles: 2 megacycles
2000 mockingbirds: two kilomockingbirds (work on it....)
10 cards: 1 decacards
1 kilogram of falling figs: 1 Fig Newton
1000 cubic centimeters of wet socks: 1 literhosen
1 millionth of a fish: 1 microfiche
1 trillion pins: 1 terrapin
10 rations: 1 decoration
100 rations: 1 C-ration
2 monograms: 1 diagram
8 nickels: 2 paradigms
3 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital: 1 I.V. League

Wall Street Journal's Reaction To The Election

Over at OpinionJournal:

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life

Reminds me of a song:

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you're chewing on life's gristle
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...
And...

...always look on the bright side
of life...
(Whistle)

Always look on the light side
of life...
(Whistle)

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle
- that's the thing.
And...always look on the bright
side of life...
(Whistle)

Come on.

Always look on the right side
of life...
(Whistle)

For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain
with a bow
Forget about your sin - give the
audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance
anyhow.

So always look on the bright side
of death...
(Whistle)

a-Just before you draw your terminal breath...
(Whistle)

Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true
You'll see its all a show, keep 'em laughin as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you

And...
Always look on the bright side
of life...
(Whistle)

Always look on the right side
of life...

C'mon Brian, cheer up

Always look on the bright side
of life...

Always look on the bright side
of life...

Worse things happen at sea you know.

I mean - what have you got to lose?
You know, you come from nothing
- you're going back to nothing.
What have you lost? Nothing.

Always look on the right side
(I mean) of life...

what have you got to lose?
You know, you come from nothing
- you're going back to nothing.
What have you lost?

Always (Nothing.) look on the right side of life...

Nothing will come from nothing ya know what they say?
Cheer up ya old bugga c'mon give us a grin!
There ya go, see!

Always look on the right side of life...
(Cheer up ya old bugga c'mon give us a grin! At same time)

There ya go, see!

Ack! Again Ack!

Albuquerque is of two minds. Republican Wilson barely leads Democrat Madrid:

... But their fate is bound up in two sets of uncounted ballots totaling more than 5,500 votes.

One group consists of more than 2,000 ballots rejected by the ballot-reading machines. They were being hand-counted by weary poll workers this morning.

A second set includes the ballots of 2,698 provisional voters and another 1,058 who cast "in lieu of" votes. Those probably won't start to be counted until Thursday, according to the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office.

With 461 of 465 precincts reporting, unofficial results from the Associated Press gave Wilson 101,305 votes to Madrid's 100,257.

Remembering old times:

The last Democrat to represent the Albuquerque area was Thomas Morris, who was first elected in 1958 to the House, when the state's seat was chosen at-large. The seat was later divided into two positions, and a third seat was added in 1983.

Morris, 87, served until 1969, when Manuel Lujan Jr. was elected to the district.

Morris spent $11,600 on his first election and said Monday that he can't believe what the candidates are spending now. It took a day to fly to Washington. And the way to get the vote out was "by talking to people, and by having their neighbors talk to other people."

"Those were the days," he said.

How Times Change

Consider, New England is the historic home of the Republican Party. To have just one Republican Congressman left is amazing! Truly historic! It means the Republicans rule the South, but can't take their dominance for granted anywhere else.

Schadenfreude

Well, about time! Just so long as we don't get carried away with it!

I was struck by several things:

• How close the Montana Senate Race and the NM Representative races were. I thought these would be blowouts by the Dems.
• How much of a blowout the Rhode Island, Tennessee, and even the Missouri races were. I thought they would be razor-thin.
• I hoped Webb would win Virginia, but I'm surprised he actually seems to have pulled it off.
• Schwarzenegger's margin is freakin' huge. Angelides just couldn't get a grip.
• Pombo's gone! Yay!
• Lieberman's not gone! Damn!

In other news, Donald Rumsfeld has resigned. Both he, Bush, and Cheney never seemed to grasp that they were not fighting dead-enders in Iraq, and they did not have sufficient endurance and force on the ground to prevail. I wonder if they grasp that even now? Defeat comes hard to the proud!

Troop levels were deliberately kept low enough not to provoke a domestic Vietnam-style backlash, at least for a while, but imagine trying to control a violent country roughly the size of California with only 140,000 troops. It doesn't work. The Iraq War has now lasted as long as World War II. Stalemate or defeat are the only two options left, and stalemate is looking untenable.

The critical difference is knowing about the enemy and what makes them tick. In World War II, the American military leaders knew vast amounts about their Nazi counterparts (although much less about their Japanese foes). I wonder how many American military leaders know who their enemies are in Iraq, and who is Shiite and who is Sunni? Do they even care? Probably seems like an undifferentiated mass of crazy people to them, I suppose....

Cheney's apparently gone hunting again today. Take that frustration out on the quail. Show 'em who's boss.

Here are selections from Salon's coverage of the evening on Fox News:

There was denial. There was bargaining. There was lashing out. There was an apparition of the undead. There was a wacky racially coded moment. There was cannibalism (if only among liberals). But I could have encountered most of that in certain relatives' houses, where the drinks would have been better and the oaths more colorful.

Fox has never been so boring. For most of the evening, Brit Hume had the bemused, faintly condescending demeanor of the veteran TV newsman who has been reduced to anchoring the weekend local news in Bakersfield or Binghamton. He'd announce that yet another porcine congressional Republican was going down the slippery slide toward a future on K Street, defeated by some heartland Democrat nobody's ever heard of, as if he were discussing the garden show on Palisade Boulevard and the times for Sunday Mass at St. Stanislaus'. The first actual candidate we got to hear thank his family was Joe Lieberman. Yes, it was that boring.

... One-time right-wing hero Rick Santorum was the first Republican senator to fall, and beyond that first news bulletin his name was not mentioned during the five hours or so I watched of Fox's election coverage. Defeated Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine was barely mentioned either, although his victorious opponent, Rep. Sherrod Brown, was described by Hume, with evident distaste, as a "true-blue liberal" and an "out-and-out liberal."

... Barnes and Kondracke acted irritated by the whole evening, as if the historic electoral upheaval they were witnessing was essentially a routine event and anyway, dammit, if they didn't make their Georgetown dinner dates on time the merlot would all get drunk by other people (possibly Democrats). Barnes insisted that "there was no ideological component" to the GOP's ever-worsening defeat, and that the widely despised Iraq war was not an ideological issue. That sounds smart until you think about it. In plain English, I think that means: Absolutely everyone has finally grasped that the president is an idiot.

... Then, as must happen on all Fox News broadcasts, things took a bizarre turn. It was as if the producers suddenly realized that their political movement was about to be cast into the wilderness, that their core viewers were all at home eating their own gizzards, and that changing the mood somehow, anyhow, was mandatory. That meant hearing Brit Hume utter the word "blogosphere" (it's still funny!) and it meant bringing in Michelle Malkin, looking as if she had showed up to fill out an application at the Hawaiian Tropic theme restaurant and sat down at the wrong desk.

It was she who chirpily informed us that NewsBusters and other right-wing sites were blaming CBS News for Santorum's defeat in Pennsylvania (and, no doubt, for global warming and the North Korean nuclear bomb). Moving along briskly to the so-called left of the spectrum, Malkin announced that Ned Lamont's defeat by Lieberman had "really opened up some fissures in the Democrat Party. There's a lot of cannibalism out there among liberals." Is that so, Michelle? I can't say I'm surprised; they are liberals after all. But tell me, who gets to eat Al Sharpton?

Right after that, just before 10 p.m. Eastern, Hume had to announce the defeats of Gov. Bob Ehrlich and Senate candidate Michael Steele, two well-liked Republicans, in Maryland. Whether it was Malkin's outburst or those losses that threw him off, Hume lost all pretense of objectivity, and spent several minutes dolefully dwelling on a lone Republican hold in a close seat, the 13th Congressional District of Florida. He seemed terribly eager for analyst Michael Barone to tell him this was a harbinger of better things ahead, and not just a Proustian remembrance of glorious elections past.

... Normal TV manners reasserted themselves, and before long Sen. John McCain came on the show, supposedly to talk about how the Republicans would land on their feet. Of course this is the new, improved McCain, a pod person hatched in some Karl Rove greenhouse who at some point in 2005 replaced the old tough-as-nails, indie-Republican model. I have long felt that I'd actually prefer McCain to Hillary Clinton in '08, but, jeez Louise, have you seen this guy lately? He sits there in a chair with all the lifelike vividness of Lenin's corpse, smiling in this ghastly, dead way and reading from a script, with no evident conviction or even awareness. I'm not positive his lips move. Sca-a-ry.

... At 11:23 EST, Fox put up a graphic showing a cherry-picked selection of the incoming House leadership. Predictably, they'd found a photo of Nancy Pelosi with a bad puffball hairdo and a weird gape-grin. Below the speaker-presumptive were a few likely chairs of major committees: Charles Rangel, Alcee Hastings, John Conyers and Henry Waxman. These people were variously described as highly liberal (Rangel and Conyers), ethically challenged (Hastings) and overly aggressive (Waxman). No one on the show observed that the folks in the picture were a woman, three black guys and a Jew. (At least not out loud.)

Shortly before Hume's signoff at midnight, Kondracke asked him, "How do you keep track of all these blogs? There's a lot of them. It seems like anybody in their pajamas ..." He trailed off.

"It's a real marketplace of ideas, isn't it?" said Hume.

All night long, it had looked like George Allen was going to squeak it out in Virginia, and the Foxies were clinging to that apparent result. Bill Kristol kept wanting to call the race and then talking himself out of it, but he did repeatedly exclaim with boyish wonder over the fact that it might be Allen who saved the Republicans' bacon in the end. Hume got to tell his viewers, right before departing, that Allen's lead had finally evaporated, and that a recount, and possibly agonizing defeat, would come with the dawn.

By the next hour under Shep Smith, Fox had totally dropped the mode of lamentation and moved on to a new message: Let's end this partisan bickering and get stuff done! It's time for new ideas! Change! Competence! Like I said earlier, it's the message of those who just got a can of whup-ass opened all over them. (It looks like condensed cream of mushroom soup, but tastes even worse.)

"This is sort of a standard election," Kondracke said crossly in summing up. "There's always something in the sixth year [of a president's tenure], whether it's Watergate or Vietnam or a recession." Yeah, Mort. There's always something. Here's the something this year: That big plan for a permanent Republican majority? It crawled out into the Iraqi desert, rolled onto its bristly back and died.

Ack!

Heather Wilson (R), Congressional Representative for the Albuquerque, NM area (District 1), is squeaking past Patricia Madrid (D)! The margin is trivial! Ack!

Virginia Is For Lovers

And for schizophrenics - Webb's margin is microscopic!

And I Thought It Was Just Another Election

Like Hillary says, it takes a village to raise a child.

No?

Oh well, you can't please everyone.....

[Update: It looks like our values are going to be destroyed. Sad, that.]

Long Legs

Boy, what some will do for looks!:

China has banned the practice of leg-lengthening, a cosmetic surgery procedure popular among young professionals who believe height will help them to climb the career ladder, after a rash of botched operations has left patients disfigured.

Leg extension surgery looks like a procedure from the Middle Ages. A doctor breaks the patient's legs and inserts steel pins into the bones, just below the knees. The pins are attached to a metal frame and every day for months the patient tightens the knobs a small amount despite excruciating pain. By constantly forcing the ends of the broken bones apart before they can heal, more new bone comes to fill in the gaps.

... The operation costs some 100,000 yuan (£6,700) and it is often six months before the patient can walk without using a walking frame. Many can never run again.

... Chinese people's increased sensitivity about their appearance has seen a rash of cosmetic surgery clinics springing up around the country, offering a huge array of different kinds of surgery. Many of the clinics are run by doctors who abandon poorly paid work in the state-run medical system to cash in on the appetite for nips, tucks and leg extensions.

... Being tall has really only become an issue in China since the economic boom - the architect of the country's opening up, Deng Xiaoping, stood less than 5ft tall. But nowadays, many Chinese feel discriminated against in their jobs if they are not tall or good-looking enough. Men wear step heels, and television ads show the footwear with its inches-giving insoles.

... The technique of leg-lengthening was conceived by Italians in 1905, but the Russians can take credit for developing the concept. Much of the breakthrough work was done by Doctor Gavril Ilizarov, who used bicycle spokes to heal fractured bones broken by gunshots. He later adapted this technique to lengthening limbs. It is now used all over the world but is rarely allowed for cosmetic reasons.

Hot!

The latest issue of EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, describes the use of satellite data to establish where the hottest land surface temperature (LST) on Earth is located. This is a little different than the location of the hottest air - that temperature is at 1.5 meters above the ground. Instead, this is the location of the foot-burningist surface temperature on Earth!

The 2004 (68.0 deg C: 154.4 deg F) and 2005 (70.7 deg C: 159.3 deg F), maxima were located in Iran's Lut Desert, on the Kerman Plateau, where temperatures get so hot that even bacteria can't survive.

But the 2003 maximum (69.3 deg C: 156.7 deg F) was located in Queensland, Australia, where I'm going in a week!

Looking at a map, the maximum Australian point seems to be in the upper regions of the Flinders River or the Diamantina watersheds, somewhere NW of Winton. The Flinders River drains into the Gulf of Carpenteria: the Diamantina drains into the interior. Pretty far from the ocean, and far from where I'm going, but still, I'm mystified why the maximum isn't farther west, at lower elevations, in the Simpson Desert, the Gibson Desert, the Great Victoria Desert, or in many other deserving locations in Australia. Maybe because the location is a little more tropical than the other places?

Oh well! Hot is hot! These temperatures make me yearn for summertime Death Valley, where at least bacteria are welcome!

I wonder whether bacteria can tough it out in Australia? Do Down-Under bacteria beat Persian bacteria?

Alaska Dust Storm

Nothing kicks up a good dust storm like exposing big expanses of glacial outwash loess to the wind! Imagine how dusty things must have been at the end of the last Ice Age!

Lame Election Predictions

Having no particular insight into what people are thinking, particularly since I get no Cable TV, and California is rather atypical of the nation as a whole, I'll stick with the general left-wing blogosphere consensus regarding who is likely to win in tomorrow's election. The most important thing happening this year is that the Northeast U.S. is defecting from the dominant southern wing of the Republican Party.

There has been lots of talk about a Democratic sweep this year, but I expect only incremental changes this year: sweeps will have to wait till 2008, until the Democrats actually have a coherent position on Iraq. Even then, Iraq is such a tarry gumball of woe, the Democrats may remain incoherent until the bitter end.

In California, I'll be voting for Angelides, but Schwarzenegger is likely to win.

Locally, I hope very much SMUD succeeds with its takeover of Yolo County (likely to save DMTC several hundred dollars - per month!)

HOUSE (231 R - 202 D)

CA
Doolittle (R) beats Brown (D)

NM
Madrid (D) beats Wilson (R)


SENATE (55 R - 45 D)

Minnesota: Klobuchar (D) wins
Michigan: Stabenow (D) wins
Washington: Cantwell (D) wins
New Jersey: Menendez (D) wins
Pennsylvania: Casey (D) wins
Ohio: Brown (D) wins
Maryland: Cardin (D) wins
Rhode Island: Whitehouse (D) wins
Montana: Tester (D) wins
Virginia: Webb (D) wins
Missouri: McCaskill (D) wins

Arizona: Kyl (R) wins
Tennessee: Corker (R) wins
Nevada: Ensign (R) wins


GOVERNOR (28 R - 22 D)

New York: Spitzer (D) wins
Massachusetts: Patrick (D) wins
Ohio: Strickland (D) wins
Colorado: Ritter (D) wins
Arkansas: Beebe (D) wins
Illinois: Blagojevich (D) wins
Michigan: Granholm (D) wins
Wisconsin: Doyle (D) wins
Oregon: Kulongoski (D) wins

Nevada: Gibbons (R) wins
California: Schwarzenegger (R) wins

"Lost And Found"

I went to see the Sunday afternoon performance of "Lost And Found" in the 600-seat hall at the expanding Christ Community Church (CCC), in Carmichael. This was the third performance of the world premiere of this musical. The leading lights behind this new musical are Darin and Sheri Adams, both of whom have had formidable stage careers and who have settled into Carmichael to raise a family (not to be confused with Scott and Sherri Adams, another couple involved in Sacramento-area musical theater). Pepper Von is choreographer.

Darin Adams is Artistic Director of the Searchlight Theater project and Director of Arts and Worship at Christ Community Church. He has appeared at Music Circus (Capt. Brackett in 'South Pacific'), plus numerous other Bay Area (Peninsula Civic Light Opera in San Mateo, West Bay Opera, Berkeley Opera) productions. Sheri Adams has also done PCLO shows (among others), and they both spent nearly three years as lead vocalists and headline actors for Seabourn Cruise Lines.

The premise is entertaining enough: Sarah Foster's (Sheri Adams') music classroom of inner-city high-school kids are introduced to Paul (Darin Adams), an understudy opera singer who experiences the dream of succeeding the main singer and establishing a career of his own. Paul and Sarah strike up a romance and tutor the bright and sassy gospel, hip-hop, and opera-aware students, particularly the bright Timothy (Sequence Grisby), who has a troubled brother, Titus (Noah Hayes). Paul eventually drifts into an addiction with painkillers, and Sarah tries to save the marriage. Titus is killed in a drive-by shooting, and Timothy struggles to retain his relationship with his tutor, Paul.

The use of sung dialogue is reminiscent of Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals: reminded me of "Evita," in a way. I liked the use of hip-hop: not enough hip-hop in musicals! The gospel singing is great as well, particularly by Rose, Timothy's mother (Darlene Tellis). Chester Patterson played an excellent Reverend Frank Jackson.

For the most part, the ensemble does a very good job. Not enough dancing, but ably executed. Pepper Von's moves were evident (Assistant Choreographer Venetia James).

The violence came too quickly, with remarkably little foreshadowing (the words were there, but not the music). Dreamlike. The exposition in Act I is a bit labored, and could probably be improved by axing a song.

The problem with the show (and the premise as well) is Paul's overweening egotism. Paul is introduced to the classroom as an already-successful opera singer, which stretches credulity as to his dedication to the students' well-being right from the start. Darin Adams is well-aware of the problem, though: the students rebuke Paul's self-centeredness several times during the show. The problem could be easily fixed too. If Paul was another teacher in the same school, like an English teacher, or a music teacher in another nearby school, his drift into addiction could then be more poignant. He would already be a grounded member of the community who experiences the American-Idol-like arc of fame, rather than being an alien landing from Mars.

I had the sense that I was a watching a metaphor of the Adames own lives as successful performers. Talking with an audience member who belongs to the congregation, I learned that the Adamses have been in Carmichael for about two years now, and CCC nearly lost them to another city at one point. The folks at CCC are very appreciative that the Adamses are with their congregation.

But what must it be like from the other side, to have the world as your oyster, and then settle into a specific community, with all its inanities, insufficiencies and inadequacies - even as nice a community as Carmichael? To play the big house, and then deal with day-to-day idiocies? Like the farmers used to say, it's hard to keep the young folks on the farm once they've seen Gay Paree.

At one point, troubled Titus tells big-head Paul, "we aren't your special project." This is the central truth of the musical. And what happens to the truth-teller in theater? You've guessed it. When the drive-by hoodlums arrive, and the guns start firing, it's Truth-teller Titus who catches a bullet.

And yet, it's crystal-clear Adams is all-too-well-aware of this. Like Paul's students, the folks at CCC aren't Adams' special project either.

So, a flawed musical, but maybe one that generates more genuine thought because of its flaws than if it had been smoother from the start.

One more weekend to go! Give it a look! Location is in Carmichael, on Manzanita, just south of Madison (map).

Lost and Found
Searchlight Theatre Project
November 3, 4, 5 - 10, 11, 12
Friday and Saturday - 7 p.m.
Sunday - 4 p.m.

"Annie" - Runaway Stage Productions

Last show of RSP's 2006 season. Saturday's performance was wonderful! Tons of experience on stage! "Annie" is very smooth, with a hard, shiny luster. ("It's a dessert topping! It's a floor wax!")

Both Kaylynn Rothleder (Annie) and Lauren Miller (Lily St. Regis) had done these same roles at DMTC in the spring of 2005. Further, in the summer of 2005, Kaylynn survived very far into a rigorous audition process to find the lead child actress for the "Annie" national Broadway tour: Kaylynn was among the last dozen, or so, of some 500-600 girls who tried out. Ray Fisher (Daddy Warbucks) said this is the fourth time he's played the role. So, several of the lead players had far more experience in these roles than is commonly the case in community theater, or for that matter, professional theater. More pertinent "Annie" experience than you are ever likely to see again on a stage!

In addition, very strong players were chosen for some of the other lead characters: Darryl Strohl (Rooster Hannigan), for example. This was the first time I've seen Lillian Baxter sing - she's good! And Andrea St. Clair, with her strong singing and perfect characterization, is a natural for the role of Warbuck's secretary, Grace Farrell.

Set design by Dave Lack of the Warbuck's mansion was excellent. Darryl Strohl's choreography gave ample opportunity to show off the humor of the show, especially by Lauren Miller.

Very few bad points. Act I was brilliant, but the pacing at the top of Act II was a bit slow. The microphones had a few, fairly minor but predictable problems: some feedback, and "clipping", particularly when Andrea St. Clair would blow out the circuitry with her powerful voice.

One-and-a-half years after the DMTC show, I worried that Kaylynn would be too polished for the innocence demanded by the show, and for about a minute at the beginning of Act I, I thought my worries justified, but as soon as she swung into the opening number, "Maybe," her big smile came out, and the Kaylynn of old was back.

Doesn't Ray have a really great voice?

I felt a strange dissonance as Scott Horsfall went through FDR's lines. I played FDR in the 2005 DMTC show, and the dissonance came as my memory struggled to recover the lines from cobweb-covered neurons. Good performance: my only concern was that Scott should remain in character, in the wheelchair, during curtain call (it disturbs the audience to see FDR walking around so soon).

Great bell-kick, Dave!

"Annie" is the best show I've seen at Runaway Stage - really, I can't recommend it highly enough. After the show, I mentioned my highest-ever rating to Michael McElroy, and he said: "What about 'The Full Monty'? Wasn't that the best one ever?" As I backed down 24th Street, first slowly, then stumbling, and then sharply accelerating away, I shouted ever-louder: "The Full Monty? Oh, fine show! Fine....fine.....", as Mike Mac maniacally laughed .....

(unfortunately no pictures - camera not charged)