Campus Is Closed 2020

Library, Sierra College, Nevada County Campus

This picture of the library on campus from across the pond is from several years ago, maybe 2013. It was the semester we lost 3 Thursdays to snow vacation. The picture was taken on Friday, the day after it started snowing quickly during class and campus was closed.

I walked home; it's only 2 miles on the wooded trail, a little farther the way I went along the roads. At class next week, we discovered I had reached home before the professor had gotten out of the parking lot with everyone trying to leave at once.

Last October, we didn't have any storms, no rain although some wind. But we had SIX power outages from PGE, the first one over 3 days. No wind here when the power was off. Supposedly only 10 days total. Everyone, including grocery stores, lost freezers full of food. Yes, some of them had backup generators; it wasn't enough.

Now, with the Corona virus pandemic, and shelter-in-place/social-distance, almost everything except grocery stores is shut down. Government offices and some businesses/restaurants are curbside pickup. I was glad to hear hardware stores are open, in case of a stopped-up drain. And I need batteries and light bulbs.

Our wonderful local independent radio station is unusually running many already recorded programs, but still keeping us updated on what is happening. And YubaNet, which we usually depend on for weather, fire, election and meetings information, is moderating regular virtual town meetings.

But schools are coping. They are shut, but at least most California districts are trying to get school lunches to kids. And some online, I don't know details. But I know at least 2 community college students who have been homeless, and certainly many more can't do online courses without the library. Over the last few years, this campus has lost the majority of its on-campus courses to online ones, and the computer lab closed several years ago.

The exception was the adult ed OLLI short courses, all I have taken for the last year, which were all in person. But since they were for older students, they were cancelled first thing. And now they are back! The 2 I had wanted to take are not, but a bunch of interesting things are available this semester on Zoom. They put that together in a month...

Old dogs are learning new tricks.

PS. Minimally Photoshopped -- I took out a garbage can.

Goodby Spot March 25, 2020

Spot on heater March 12, 2011 - 6 months old

The kittens were born in September 2010. Since Lassie died, the remaining three have been healthy and happy, going out on the balcony/low roofs when the weather was nice (which it was all February 2020). They often slept on the bed with me, or near/on a heater. They had a newly cleared table in a sunny window in the bedroom. But this morning, Spot is gone.

Yesterday aft and eve, not eating, crying out from time to time in that deep voice as if to be sick, but not being sick. Sleeping on foot of bed, alone. ( Usually her friend/sister Grey Mouse would have been with her, licking her head and ears. But it was chilly; Grey Mouse was sitting on the radiator heater. ) Then late eve down off bed, curled up there at foot, and after a while, sick. Then she felt better, tried to get up on bed by me (Rexie was sleeping under the cover -  they would have fought). I thought she was OK. This morning when I woke, she was dead. By 10am already stiff. I think she must have eaten something bad while their food and water dishes were empty yesterday morning.

Back at the beginning of the year Spot had a respiratory thing, and was having trouble breathing. I put her in/under a blanket with a bowl of steaming water. An old-fashioned remedy which helped a lot, and warmed her up too. Also, she wasn't eating, so giving her some of the smallest jars of meat-based baby food worked well. She was very hungry, and gobbled it instantly. She had lost a lot of weight, and didn't have any to loose, a small light little cat. She had, I think, by 2 days ago, fully recovered, always eager to eat and drink.

Spot was the friendliest as a kitten, when they had visitors a few times. She and Grey Mouse were friends now, most of the time, sleeping curled up together, or half on top of each other. Occasionally Rexie would tolerate being on the bed at the same time as the pair of them. (And not even sitting on the top of my head growling, as he did as a kitten twice when Buddy came into the bedroom.)

Since January, I have been noticing especially how pretty her eyes and Grey Mouse' eyes were; their eye colors have gone quite grey, very pretty with their cool grey coats. I meant to take pictures...


Goodby Spot. I love you.  I.miss you.

I was probably listening to Bach online - Bach's birthday program in the middle of the night when she died near the foot of my bed. The music was on only softly, so I should have heard her, and didn't hear anything. My favorite composer will never seem quite the same to me, perhaps...

Irrationality? Floating rocks? Rockbergs! Feb 14, 2018

Floating ice and floating rocks, small pond on campus, March 7, 2016

Time to reread one of my favorite books, Irrationality, by Stuart Sutherland. An excuse for a few quotes. He's funny; you have to watch for it.

"What constitutes a rational decision depends upon one's knowledge. There is a rider to this. If one has reason to believe one's knowledge is insufficient, then it is rational, particularly in the case of important decisions, to seek out more evidence: unfortunately, as we will see, when people do so, they usually act in a wholly irrational way, since they only seek evidence that will support their existing beliefs." (p. 5)

"The effects of conformity on beliefs and attitudes are the more injurious because people tend to associate with others who have similar beliefs to themselves. ... the only way to substantiate a belief is to try to disprove it. But because like mixes with like, people are rarely exposed to counter-arguments to their more deeply held convictions, let alone to counter-evidence. Their beliefs conform to those of their associates: hence, there is little possibility of eliminating persistent errors. "(p. 41)

"Everyone is irrational some of the time and in particular everyone is susceptible to the availability error. I give a final striking example ... In 1969, Jerzy Kosinsky's novel Steps won the American National Book Award for fiction. Eight years later some joker had it retyped and sent the manuscript with no title and under a false name to fourteen major publishers and thirteen literary agents in the US, including ... the firm that had originally published it. Of the twenty-seven people to whom it was submitted, not one recognised that it had already been published. Moreover, all twenty-seven rejected it. All it lacked was Jerzy Kosinsky's name to create the halo effect: without the name, it was seen as an indifferent book." (pp. 28-29)

"People have an amazing capacity to remember pictures. After being shown 10,000 photographs just once they can correctly recognize almost all of them a week later. This is in marked contrast to the very poor memory for isolated words."(p. 19)

"The term 'love' was defined in an authoritative dictionary of psychology as 'a form of mental illness not yet recognised in the standard diagnostic manuals'. (p. 115) [The authoritative dictionary was written by S. Sutherland...]

Now, about those floating rocks. I have seen that pond drained. It is about knee-deep, and there are no rocks sticking up in it. What happens is that when the pond freezes over, students throw rocks out onto the ice, trying to break it. At first this doesn't succeed, and in the freeze-thaw cycles, some of the rocks get frozen to the ice. When they finally break it [that's why there are those entirely unnatural sharp edges to the ice], some of those rocks are attached to large enough pieces of ice to support them, mostly invisible under the water, and the rocks go floating around the pond. Rockbergs.

Re-examine what you see. Go over the evidence. There are floating rocks, and underground jumping rocks. More things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.

But real. With rational explanations.


He gives citations for almost everything, but not for the Jerzy Kosinsky story. I have to wonder who that 'joker' was who re-submitted the story...

Stay Warm

Lassie on heater, probably spring 2011

Doesn't she look grumpy? And she is looking down. I think someone might have been there to dispute the possession of the heater with her.  She is glaring "Don't you push me off!"

This is probably the kittens' first year, spring or early summer 2011. She doesn't have her adult color green eyes yet. And that year they were kept in the bathroom with a heater, separate from Rex. That was the year that they were all on my lap in the chair, and we were enjoying a fire in the woodstove - on June 2nd!

We had a dry December this year - bad news in case we go back to drought conditions without fully recovering from the last one. We haven't had snow yet here, but back east they are having feet of snow in a winter cyclone, and record low temperatures.

I recently asked myself, "what do you do when the power goes off?"

And the answers I immediately came up with:

What do I do when the power goes out?
I get a fire started in the wood stove, (and if it happened today I’d be cursing myself while I cleared away the clutter in front of the stove) and be sure to cook dinner over the stove before dark. And go bring in more firewood before dark. Before it rains. Or snows.
Or dye some fabric, or take a bath, or wash the dishes with the last warm water in the water heater.
Or put extra blankets on the bed, and curl up in the dark and call my mother, whose phone number was the one I knew in the dark.

Seriously. There are lots of things to do to take advantage of/survive the situation. Those with a live-in lover have another option. Why they have lots of births 9 months later in cities.

Those answers are in reverse order, most recent to oldest, of things I have actually done over the years. It depends a little on what time of year, and time of day it is. But the latest wisdom I learned several years ago, when my power was out for more than 3 days.

[That is common enough here that it is necessary to have another source of heat and cooking, and lights, handy for when it happens. The bus driver, a few blocks away, had his power out for 2 separate weeks that year.]

That time, after a couple of days I had used most of the wood I had inside, and was wading through a foot of snow carrying firewood. And the lights I had were not bright enough to see what I was doing if I had to cook dinner after dark.

I learned to bake bread the summer I turned 16, at the cabin in Northern Idaho. In a woodstove. And the little woodstove heaters don't channel heat to the top the way a cookstove does. Much harder to cook over.


The next time the power went out that year, it came on only a few hours later. But by that time I had started a fire, and heated some leftover soup, and was having dinner.


2020 Last October, 2019, PGE turned the power off 6 times -- more than 10 days off total! We all, including grocery stores, lost freezers-full of food. There wasn't any rain all month, some wind -- not necessarily where the power was off. They were doing planned maintenance.

Smoke Vacation! Sept. 23, 2014

Yesterday late afternoon - the ground-level smoke had cleared somewhat

I took this picture to show the charming old sawdust-burner, from when this was a lumbermill, all grown-over with a vine. It's turning color at the top - not sure if too much sun/too little water, or fall color. And also to show the exaggerated atmospheric perspective given by the smoky low visibility.

The last time we were having smoke for weeks on end, from over a 1000 fires* caused by one set of lightning storms, I was wondering just how smoky it was in Renaissance Italy, when artists discovered the idea of atmospheric perspective. (How things get fuzzier, lighter, and bluer with distance, caused by more atmosphere between us and them with more distance.)

This was about noon today!

Today visibility is much lower; that further hill which just showed yesterday is gone today. (Maybe just a ghost there.) Normally, I think I remember, there's another hill or two to see...

And the air smells much smokier. So glad I had a chance to open up the house for a while yesterday evening to air out - my rooms had been closed up for 3 days - and even more glad that I was awake in the middle of the night to close it all up again, including the floor which was open before.

*This time it's one giant fire to our Southeast. It's West and Southwest of Lake Tahoe. The King fire.

And the college campus, as well as the high school, is closed today. We've had snow vacation before, but smoke vacation? That's a new one to me.

This doesn't look like a heat wave . . . July 4th, 2013 noon

July 4th, 2013 noon - over 100 degrees today

But it was.

With the clouds and extra moisture, it was hot and muggy, and didn't cool off as well at night. And around 100 degrees F all week!

At least the possible thunderstorms didn't happen and cause fires.

This week, July 18, it's about to heat up again, after a week of low 80s. 100 degrees by Saturday.

Amazing how cool 80 degrees feels in the summer. And how hot it is in the spring.

And at the end of that week, walking up the hill, I met a neighbor who said how cool 90 degrees felt!

Of the 2 tall trees on the left, the right one was the redtails' home tree. You can just see that steep crotch, near the top. You see how far away it really is.

Now that I've posted a sun halo, I guess I should show a sundog

picture from fall 2011

This picture is of a sundog, related to the halo. Often they come in pairs; this one was single. Called sundogs because they follow the sun around. There can be one on each side of it, at 22 degrees.

Since I learned that they exist, I've been seeing them 3 or 4 times a year. Before that, I never saw them, even during the years I worked outdoors, until the end when I knew about them.

This is the best one I've seen.

Update: for best sky pics, especially without a polarizing filter, try lowering your exposure by a stop or even 2 stops. Or, of course, do that afterwards in Photoshop by adjusting the exposure setting.

Aligned hexagonal ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. This one shows the prism-effect of spectral colors too.

After the rain

Just after the rain stopped, June 25, 2013, 5:30pm

Rain?! After the rain? No kidding?

Yep. It rained solidly for about 2 days. Not a hard rain, but a steady soaking. Something about a large Arctic low moving the jet-stream, and oceanic tropical moisture. It was a warm storm, just down to the 60s F.

Actually, it often does rain in June here, but not every year. It is more surprising this year because of the warm dry spring we had.

This picture is looking out over the top of the grocery store, between tall trees, from the bus bench across the street, about an hour after the rain stopped on Tuesday. There are houses all around, and under those trees too — but what a lovely view. And the clouds sitting on the tops of the hills.

Today, Wednesday, it was a lovely walk to campus. The air yesterday and today was very soft-feeling, with all the moisture, and warm.

By next Tuesday, the temperature is supposed to be back up to 101 degrees F.

I decided years ago that if it ever didn't look like this here, I wouldn't want to live here anymore.

Halo around sun, June 18, 2013

Picture of sun halo, June 18, 2013

And I got a picture.

Unfortunately, too large to fit in the camera's field-of-view.

Ice crystals in the high atmosphere. . .

It wasn't supposed to get to 100 degrees F the first week in June

June 8, 2013 sunset

But this year it did.*


Two years ago, the kittens and I were enjoying fires in the woodstove the first week of June. 

*Not here at this house among tall trees, on the brow of a hill, where it only got to the mid-90s. But in the neighboring town it did. Record-breaking heat for the whole of Northern California.

It wasn't supposed to snow this month… (5/17/11)

Broken oak

This oak tree lost its main upright top in the previous unseasonal storm, when the leaves were still on the trees, in November. The little bit of snow in this picture highlights the break and the giant branch on the ground. The branch that would have someday sheltered the house from late-afternoon, late-summer sun...

It snowed more than this though.

photo from May 15, 2011

Or I guess I could call this post "Iris squashed each spring". 

But not every spring...

It wasn't supposed to snow this month. . . . Friday the 13th at work? (from May15 2011)

Photo May 15, 2011

It hasn't yet this year, but that year it did.

It was Sunday morning, May 15th, that it snowed. This picture is from Monday morning, with patches of snow still, including this South side balcony, and the irises down below it.

But it never pays to count ones irises (before they're hatched). I didn't have a chance to make it to the quilt show either. Or to Empire Mine park to see the irises....

I have a superstition about that, honestly come by. Grandpa used to say "God willing and the creek don't rise."

For many years I have caught the bus to the nearby grocery store, and had 20 minutes to run in, get groceries, and back out to the bus stop before it comes back. (Although with the cutbacks in bus services the last several years, I now have a 15 minute walk uphill with the groceries, instead of  a level walk past 2 houses and down the driveway.)

And I usually say "With luck, I'll catch you on your way back" to let the driver know to look for me. But every time I have said instead "I'll catch you on your way back" I have missed the bus. Every time!


So I try not to assume anything will work out, just hope.

Here's the clouds from Friday the 13th, 2 days before the snow. They mean a storm is on the way in about 2 days, I think.

Summertime, and the living is easy

New sailboat, summer 1969

Summertime, and the living is easy......and the cotton is high.

It's easy to guess that the person who wrote those lyrics had never picked cotton.

Neither have I, but my first job was as summer field labor in an experimental barley field. That was in the pre-sunscreen era, and it took only one day for me to figure out that someone as pale-skinned as I needed long sleeves and a hat.
(Why  it took me that long I don't know, I always burned badly.) And summertime work out in a hot sunny field is not easy at all.


The year I was a freshman in college, the woman who graduated as  the valedictorian that year had earned her way through college picking fruit in the Wenatchee Valley. I was very impressed.


The little sailboat is from a few years later. That's me, and our dad behind the mast, and a brother. And one year an article had been published about PABA (para-amino-benzoic acid). So Dad mixed up some in alcohol, and my sister and I tried it while sailing across the lake. We were amazed that we didn't sunburn at all.

And around here, the living is not so easy in summertime.

True it's not between 42 degrees F and 52 on the main floor (I used a refrigerator thermometer to check that, since the thermometer on the non-functional thermostat only goes down to 52.) Sometimes 52 degrees is a lot colder than other times…

And not between 50 and 60 degrees on the top floor. The higher temperatures are after several sunny days, or when there's been a fire in the woodstove.

And I'm not wading through a foot of snow to carry firewood from the garage to the house and upstairs after several days of the power being out, like a couple of years ago. (Normally I try to carry firewood up between storms.)

Yes, it only takes 5 minutes to dress in one layer of clothes, but more baths/showers and more laundry.

But the main thing is that it takes half an hour to go around morning and evening closing/opening curtains and/or windows, and turning on and off fans and sprinklers. And when it's hot, it's hot.

When the living is really easy here is right now, spring and fall, in the weeks when the temperature is fine and the windows can be left open to screens all day and all night. Between rain or snow storms. Before the weather gets too hot. With fresh spring vegetables or fall harvest at the grower's market.

Except it's pollen season now, or just finished. Drifts of yellow everywhere. Can't leave the windows open to let that blow in. Can't leave them open again until I've cleaned and vacuumed window-sills, porches, low roofs. Then I will be able to see if it's really over. The recent rains might have finished it, but the pollen cones haven't fallen off the pines yet.

Iris blue each spring....

This photo taken June 3, 2009. (really?)

I took photos of this same iris yesterday, May 8, 2011. It's been a warm week; the apple trees and daffodils are done blooming, hawthornes (that dreadful weed) have started. This weekend it's been cool. This iris and one more on the South side (palest lavender-white, both shorter earlier varieties, are in bloom. Along with, around town, the deep red-violet shorter, antique, early-blooming one.

Taller types, and the ones on the other side of the house have not started yet.

The title is from a haiku.

Reminded of things Japanese by a visit yesterday to Kodo Arts, an ephemeral seller of Japanese antiques. Gorgeous furniture. I found a couple of little fabric stamps - probably destined to inspire virtual batiks.

Once, that haiku was the cause of my being locked into the college library just before Christmas vacation!

I had it only in translation - I wanted the original in Japanese. I was reading Tale of Gengi (translated).

So, searching for the Japanese original of the haiku, I was in a back aisle on the top floor of the college library in my home town, in the Japanese written in Japanese section. Since I don't read the language, this was not simple.

I had been there for a couple of hours, sitting on the floor. (Ah, youth.) I guess I had been pretty quiet....

But they didn't make an announcement, or even dim the lights, when they closed early and left. It was still daylight.

I came out of the stacks to find myself alone and locked in. The day before vacation.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The denouement was anticlimactic - there was a phone; I called Security.


Oh, the haiku? Slightly altered translation:

Dead my old fine hopes
And dust my dreaming . . . but still
Iris blue each spring. 

Shushiri 

(Shushiki? His name appears both ways.  
I can't find the haiku book my Dad gave me, when I was in high school, before we went to Japan.)


see haiku -  public domain file, trans. Peter Beilenson 1955,  from http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/jh/jh02.htm

The apple trees are blooming now

This photo is from spring 2003. It was taken with a film camera, so no handy reference to the date, but I think in early May, after all of April had been cold: snow, rain, hail, freezing. I remember the apple trees were blooming in May.

This year mid-Feb through March was all cold, while April has had a few warm spells, one is starting this week. And only token snow. The apple trees started blooming on about the 16th, may be finishing by May. Don't know yet if they are late this year - I think of them as early April. Need to check old photos.

The late daffodils are still blooming - finishing. And the English and Spanish bluebells (Scillas, they used to be called) are just coming into full bloom..

Quilt show this weekend.

The sky doesn't fit in my camera...

Went up to the campus hill this evening to look at the gorgeous clouds, and as I got out of the car, I said "The sky doesn't fit in my camera!"

It was such a whole circular panorama of diversity and gorgeous light and shade that there was no way to get it into a photograph or a dozen photographs.

The map is not the territory. The photo doesn't get all the shades our eyes do.

Sunsets in Seattle used to be like that, layers and layers of every shade of silver & gray, with no color at all. I came from a dusty place, and missed sunset color.

This photo was actually taken a few minutes before, from a parking lot lower down, while I could still see through all the layers of clouds to the sky.

Couldn't really tell what direction the higher layers were going, but while we were on campus, a lower layer of clouds, seemingly barely above the treetops, was moving in from the South (it was to the Southeast as well) and obscuring everything above.


We went to dinner, and when we came out it was pouring rain.

It wasn't supposed to snow today....

It often does in early April. But the forecast was only saying scattered rain showers.

Yesterday it was sunny with scattered clouds (cumulus?), and colder than it looked because of the wind.

This deer is sitting in the lee of a tree ( and a Ponderosa which was mature in 1917 provides significant shelter).

Do you suppose that s(he) was surprised by the snow, or knew it was coming?

Picture taken Apr. 13 2011, 11:09 am. It was still snowing then, but is melting now.


It wasn't until I looked at these photos large size to decide which one to post that I could see the head injury. Car? Falling branch? Do antlers when they come off leave a wound?

Patches' reflection

Photo of Patches taken in the living room window, Nov. 4, 2010.

I think we were out there that day to feed Rex his kitten formula, and because I didn't want him to miss any mama-feeding-opportunities, Patches was with us.

The only Photoshopping I did to this image was to remove distracting areas of putty etc. on the window frame. The lighting was just right for the reflection, and Patches was posing, looking out.

The texture in the window with her reflection was the fall foliage, seen through one of the best float-glass windows with its wavery distortion, at an extreme angle, which gives the most effect.

 We were happy that day; Little Kitten was surviving and thriving on his supplemental feeding, and it was warm and sunny.

It's been warm and sunny for several days now, the first time in more than a month. Larry helped me move wet firewood up from the driveway to the house and garage yesterday - much easier to use the car than my carrying it all myself. And I was almost out. Still have to carry it upstairs, but I'm set now in case we get another big snowstorm (entirely likely in early April) and the power goes out again.

So far Patches and fat Mousie, who I think has the disease, are healthy-seeming. The kittens are living separately with me, busily randomizing the contents of my rooms. Tigrr, Pandora, and Buddy are unfortunately together, but all right. Except it doesn't seem possible that anything as skinny as Tigrr could still be alive.

Autre temps, autre fleurs

Different years, different flowers. Some, like the paperwhite narcissus, which don't need cooling, flower at about the same time each year (Jan through Feb).

Others are very variable in when they flower, especially the flowering fruit trees, which have cooling requirements, like the earliest here, the flowering plums.

The winter iris, Iris unguicularis, flowers for about 2 months, sometime between November and April. It provides enough blooms to cut a few for a vase every few days - except this year the deer (probably) have discovered it, I have to get there before they do.

We usually but not always have several weeks of warm weather with cool nights in Jan & Feb. The years we don't things are off schedule.

This year we had snow in mid-Nov 2010, very early. Leaves still on the trees, lots of broken branches and fallen trees. I lost the vertical top to the oak west of the house, the one that might have shaded the house in late summer someday. On my south slope I usually don't see the first few frosts to take the leaves off & ripen the fruit of the persimmon until Thanksgiving. (Other microclimates are quite different - Grandpa knew where to build a house.)

Planting weather (like for lawn seed) is usually between mid-April and mid-Oct. One year that I was doing spray-dyeing out in the yard, we had warm weather until the end of October. (I'm not sure if that was the year it snowed on Nov 2 or not. I think so.)

It almost always snows in March and early April. The first year I was here, the April Fools day storm dumped about a foot and a half of snow. The year my sister died in March, after I got back here, all of April it was cold, snow, hail, freezing rain. Things were a month late blooming. Apple trees were blooming in mid-May.

I'm planning to do a five-year gardening/weather calendar, with pictures of what's in bloom each week in several years, and places to write temperatures and notes for each year.

This photo was taken in 2006 on March 9, but this year the flowering plums are almost done Feb 23, the leaves are emerging. Last Thursday it snowed enough to close campus; we've just had several partly sunny days with snow on the ground, in the next few days it's supposed to snow 1-2 ft above 2000 ft. It probably won't look like this. 

PS April 14 This year, starting Feb 17th, it snowed almost every Thursday/Friday all the way through March. The one week it didn't snow, it rained. The power went out for days the week I posted this. The first warm weekend was April Fool's week, warm and sunny enough to go for a wildflower walk at Bridgeport.

Foggy today

Picture taken 12/15/2009, 1:06 pm.

Ran errands today with Michelle - the last time she will be here. It was the first time I have left here, except to go for a walk, since I arrived in late October.