When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

People with a variety of talents are called polymaths. An extemely talented polymath, for example, was Leonardo da Vinci. The High Renaissance scientist was also renowned as a painter, philosopher and sculptor.

Maddy Sobel in a self-illustration

She’s no Leonardo, but Madelyn Sobel of Point Reyes Station is definitely a polymath. Maddy, as she is known, holds a BA in Fine Arts from the Pasadena Art Center College of Design. Her studies focused on illustration. Over the years, her illustrations have been published as editorial cartoons, printed in posters, used to illustrate children’s books and much more.

Around Point Reyes Station, however, she’s best known for “Maddy’s Jammin” with its sandwich board sign in front of her home on Highway 1 downhill from West Marin School. In the kitchen of her home, she cooks at all hours, making raspberry jam, orange marmalade, apricot jam, and many more which she sells from her house and downtown.

In addition, she is a social activist, and a show of her art will open for a month at 6 p.m.  Thursday, March 2, in the Point Reyes Library with a portion of the sales of her art to be donated to Ukainian causes.

Another polymath activist from West Marin will also be on hand opening night.

Betty Grinshtein, who has been assistant cheesemaker at the Cowgirl Creamery, was born in Lviv, Ukraine, which is at the Polish border. Along with English and Ukrainian, Betty speaks Polish and Russian, and at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, she will tell of spending three months last year providing travel logistics and distributing aid to Ukrainian refugees fleeing into Poland by train.

Betty Grinshtein

“I’m back in West Marin,” Grinshtein comments. “However, my heart is still in Ukraine and Poland,” and she is still helping raise funds for an NGO called the Karkiv and Przemal Project (KHARP) “so they can continue to assist the refugees and the vulnerable Ukrainian population unable to evacuate from Eastern Ukraine.”

The two polymaths’ talk and art show at the Point Reyes Library next week will no doubt be fascinating.

When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

For the second time in a row a posting is really late coming online. This time the problem was with Safari plus a myriad of troubles upgrading the operating system in my computer. My wife Lynn spent several hours on the phone for four days this past week, talking with computer techies to straighten it all out. This posting was actually written last week.

 It’s been a week of surprising observations. I was downtown a week ago ago when I thought I spotted my wife Lynn’s parked car. I walked over to it and was about to open the passenger’s door when I realized the woman inside was not Lynn. Moreover, the woman had her skirt raised above her waist and was adjusting the crotch of her panties. When I subsequently told Lynn, who was parked nearby, what my mistake had revealed, she sarcastically quipped, “Well, at least your timing was good.”

________________________________________________________________________________________

Lynn herself made a fascinating observation this week. She spotted a bobcat walking toward a doe in the field downhill from Mitchell cabin.

To Lynn’s surprise, the deer didn’t flee. Instead, the doe rose on her hind legs facing the bobcat and kicked at it with her front feet. The bobcat lumbered off.

We see several deer around Mitchell cabin every day, but bobcats only occasionally. This one, however, left a calling card: a small pile of scat by our front steps.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Lynn and I scatter birdseed morning and evening on our front deck’s railings and benches.

The birds enthusiastically consume most of the seed, but inevitably leave a bit behind.

Roof rats just as inevitably show up to finish off the leftovers. Here four rats gobble down what the birds left behind.

When rats show up before all the birds have left, the two manage to get along fairly well.

They’re called “roof rats” because the species likes to hang out near the tops of buildings. Our roof rats never get higher than the basement, and we’ve killed off those that got that far.

However, they also crawl inside Lynn’s car where they’ve gnawned through wiring and even gnawed their way into her glove compartment where they chew on road maps and other papers. In an effort to keeps them out of the car she sprays peppermint oil around their entry points. To some degree that helps, but it leaves the car smelling like a candy bar.

_______________________________________________________________________________

And now for some real humor, I’ll look to Jimmy Niro’s book Dad Jokes.

What did the cook say to the dough? I knead you.

I just finished my first day of excavation training. So far I’m really digging it.

You never see penguins in Great Britain because they’re afraid of Wales.

What did Tennessee? The same thing Arkansas.

 When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

My apologies for this blog’s two-month hiatus. Everything I’d wanted to write about was delayed by a series of doctors’ exams. It now appears that I’ve been consuming too much potassium, which over time could be bad for the kidneys. Then came the “bomb cyclone,” as weathermen called last month’s storm system. It repeatedly blacked out Mitchell cabin and created distractions such as downed limbs. One medium-sized branch cracked a wooden front step, which is nothing compared to the damage to some of my neighbors’ properties.

Point Reyes Arabian Adventures

Two neighboring families on Campolindo Road had trees drop in their yards while a shed at Point Reyes Arabian Adventures horseback riding  just around the corner was crushed when a huge cypress fell. Luckily the damage was limited to a couple of wheelbarrows in the shed. A similarly large tree fell on the Wells Fargo property downtown in Point Reyes Station but fortunately did not hit the bank.

Other homes and buildings in West Marin were not so lucky, with Bolinas suffering some of the worst damage from falling trees while neighboring Stinson Beach endured widespread harm to homes and docks when the high winds drove waves ashore. As a tragic bookend two weeks after the storm, at the northern end of the Marin coast near the mouth of Tomales Bay, a kayaker disappeared in the waves and presumably drowned.

The chaos could be a metaphor for America’s political craziness. Donald Trump’s repeated lies that he won the 2020 presidential election seemed the height of the nuttiness until New York Congressman George Santos raised the bar. As the British newspaper The Guardian reported:

“Santos has temporarily withdrawn from two House committees, to which he was appointed by party leaders, despite a spiraling scandal over his largely made-up résumé, bizarre past behavior and campaign finance filings….

“Earlier this month, the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, appointed Santos to the committees on small business and science, space and technology. The speaker did so despite confirming that a member of [the campaign] staff for Santos pretended to be McCarthy’s chief of staff while seeking campaign donations.”

But that was hardly the biggest news of Santos’ first month in Congress.

George Santos

“Found to have largely fabricated his educational and professional résumé, Santos has denied or deflected reports about past conduct, including an alleged fraud of a homeless veteran seeking medical care for his dog and appearances as a drag queen in Brazil, where he is also being investigated over alleged use of a stolen checkbook.

“Santos is under local, state and federal investigation in the US. Last week it emerged that the congressman, who has also been known as Anthony Devolder, faces a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice over campaign-finance filings that have prompted questions about the source of his [sudden] wealth and a possible link to a Russian oligarch.

“Santos’ [congressional] district party and other New York Republicans have been joined by New York and national Democrats in calling for Santos to quit. Polling in [his] district shows that nearly 80 percent of voters there now think he should do so.”

In an interview with OAN,  a friendly right-wing network, Santos said this week, “From now on, anything and everything is gonna be above-board. It’s largely been above-board.. .”

All this makes me wish that life would return to normal. Or are severe storms and increasingly dishonest politicians the new norm?

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

Like other wild birds, turkeys regularly show up on the deck of Mitchell cabin. We put out birdseed for smaller birds, and the turkeys try to horn in on the meal. The trouble is the turkeys will gobble it all up if they can, and they scare off the other birds. Perhaps worst of all, they leave behind huge droppings.

Benjamin Franklin disapproved of bald eagles being named our national bird, and there has long been a myth that he wanted the turkey to replace the bald eagle as our national bird. In fact, he merely compared the eagle to a turkey to denigrate the eagle. The myth grew out of a letter Franklin wrote his daughter in which he complained that the “bald eagle…is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly…[He] is too lazy to fish for himself.”

Even the turkey, Franklin wrote, is “a much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America…He is besides — though a little vain and silly — a bird of courage.”

I’m glad that no one actually proposed making turkeys our national bird because Lynn and I are forever having to shoo them off our deck.

Despite our shooing, turkeys only momentarily stop showing up.

Wild turkeys are native to the Midwest and East Coast, as well as Canada and Mexico — but not to California. They got here in the 1950s when the state Department of Fish and Game, as it was then named, released some in the Napa Valley as prey for hunters.

In 1988, a few from the Napa Valley flock were transported to Loma Alta Ranch overlooking the San Geronimo Valley. Before long that small flock expanded to the valley floor and by the year 2000 had spread throughout West Marin.

The view from Mitchell cabin.

They can also be a nuisance in other ways. In an extreme case, a turkey in February 2005 blacked out the town of Tomales.

Turkeys are not great flyers, and turkeys in Tomales had taken to gliding off a steep slope to get across Highway 1.

On one occasion, a turkey misjudged the height of some powerlines and flew into them. Two 12,000-volt lines slapped together, causing an explosion with a bright flash.

The explosion surprisingly did not kill the turkey. It fell to the ground and started wandering around in dazed circles. Resident Walter Earle, who saw the flash, immediately called the county fire department to report, “Some turkey just took out the powerlines.” Fire Capt. Tom Nunes later said he at first assumed Earle was talking about a drunk driver. The blackout lasted four hours.

Awhile ago it began to feel like this country had lost its way, what with school shootings, political violence, and a former president’s describing as “genius” Vladimir Putin’s strategy for Russia to take over parts of Ukraine.  

In contrast, life in our northern neighbor appeared mostly calm and friendly. Maybe it would be a happier place to live. Helping create that impression was my late mother’s being an immigrant from Canada who’d become a naturalized US  citizen.

On a lark, I looked up what all I’d have to do to go back and become a Canadian citizen. As it turns out, not much. In fact, I may be one already. Here’s how a Canadian law firm specializing in immigration-law, Allen and Hodgman, explains the situation: “Was your mother or father born or naturalized in Canada? Under recent amendments to Canada’s Citizenship Act, nearly all persons whose parent was born or naturalized in Canada are now Canadian citizens.

“This is true even if your parent left Canada as a child; married an American citizen (or other non-Canadian); or became a U.S. citizen (or citizen of another country).

“These new laws apply to the first generation born abroad. So if your mother or father was born in Canada you are likely a citizen…. Canadian citizens are free to live anywhere in the world, so you can obtain your Certificate of Citizenship without having to leave the US.”

All that sounded like an invitation from extremely attractive neighbors until I read Friday’s news. David DePape, the man who tried to attack House Speaker Nancy Pelosi but instead injured her husband Paul, is a Canadian. Overstaying his visa, he has been in the US illegally for the past 14 years.

Apparently he was progressive and liberal 14 years ago, but ultraconservative  conspiracy propaganda turned him into a rightwing terrorist. (DePape’s now said he’d planned for the attack on Pelosi to be the first of several.)

Apparently not everybody is happy no matter where they’ve lived.

—————————————————

At least life in Point Reyes Station has been relatively happy in the past week. Here is the highpoint of happiness — the Halloween celebration Monday:

It ranged from children in costumes celebrating….

to Davis (his first name), the town’s postmaster, doing the same. Evidently one doesn’t have to live in Canada to enjoy himself, so I guess I’ll stay put.

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

On Oct. 10, 1978, attorney Paul Morantz reached into the mailbox of his Pacific Palisades home and was bitten by a 4.5-foot-long rattlesnake whose warning rattles had been cut off. The snake had been placed there by two men whose truck’s license plate was traced to Synanon headquarters.

Morantz a week earlier had won a $300,000 judgment for a woman who said she’d been abducted by Synanon and abused. Synanon founder Charles Dederich was offended by the judgment and was repeatedly heard asking his followers, “Why don’t you break his [Morantz’s] legs?” an ex-member told me.  A few days before the rattlesnake attack, Morantz himself called me to say he was aware a campaign against him had been launched in Synanon and that he was concerned about a possible attempt on his life.

Synanon attorney Phil Bourdette subsequently turned over to Los Angeles police two members of the cult suspected of the crime. They were Lance Kenton, 20, son of bandleader Stan Kenton, and Joe Musico, 28, a Vietnam veteran who had entered Synanon as a drug addict.

Paul Morantz in his younger days.

Morantz went on to litigate against brainwashing by a variety of cults, including Scientology, Peoples Temple, the Hare Krishnas, and the Rajneesh movement. He represented various clients pro bono and was frequently described as heroic.

But he never completely recovered from the snake’s bite. “To this day,” Oxygen Crime News reported two years ago, “Morantz suffers from a lifelong illness related to the rattlesnake venom, which requires him to receive blood transfusions every other week.” The music magazine Shindig noted that Morantz said he got blood disease from the venom. 

On Monday I received a sad email from Morantz’s son Chaz, saying that his father “passed away yesterday at the Santa Monica hospital. I was with him when he let go peacefully after far too much pain and suffering these last couple of years.”

Chaz wrote that this photo “was taken just a couple of months ago when we took him out for his 77th birthday, for sushi in the Palisades.”

The Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (right) in 1894 wrote his eight light-hearted humoresques, the best known of which is Humoresque G flat No. 7. You’ll recognize it the minute you hear it. The short composition, in turn, led to some unlikely associations six decades later.

———————————

As it happens, toilets on most trains traditionally emptied onto the tracks below or onto their shoulder.  Some trains in the British Isles, in fact, still do. In the US, however, this unesthetic arrangement has been largely eliminated, so to speak.

Amtrak phased out its use of such toilets in the 1980s after waste from a Silver Meteor train on a bridge crossing the St. Johns River in Florida landed on a fisherman who filed a lawsuit.

––––––––––––––––––

 Before then, railroad companies were more concerned with toilet waste landing in train stations during stops. In the 1950s, all this inspired a Canadian-American folksinger/songwriter, Oscar Brand (1920-2016), to write a comic song (click to hear) that relates romantic love with the need to use a toilet while on a train, as well as with the Union army’s Gen. William Techumseh Sherman. Brand (left) took the tune from Dvorak’s Humoresque No. 7.

–––––––––––––––––––

Passengers will please refrain

From flushing toilets while the train

Is in the station. Darling, I love you!

We encourage constipation

While the train is in the station

Moonlight always makes me think of you.

If you wish to pass some water,

kindly call the pullman porter,

He’ll place a vessel in the vestibule.

If the porter isn’t here,

Try the platform in the rear —

The one in front is likely to be full.

If the woman’s room be taken,

Never feel the least forsaken,

Never show a sign of sad defeat.

Try the men’s room in the hall,

And if some man has had the call,

He’ll courteously relinquish you his seat.

If these efforts all are vain,

Then simply break a window pane —

This novel method used by very few.

We go strolling through the park

Goosing statues in the dark,

If Sherman’s horse can take it, why can’t you?

–––––––––––––––

Amen, but can you safely goose a horse, let alone a statue of one?

 A 90-year-old man smoking pot on Mount Tamalpais this past July 3 sparked a blaze that set his clothes and the hillside around him on fire, according to the August edition of Tamalpais Guardian published by the Tamalpais Conservation Club. 

Mount Tamalpais

Were it not for a north wind that blew it toward the shore of Lake Bon Tempe, the two-acre fire could easily have spread through the watershed and the Cascade Canyon area of Fairfax, The Marin Independent Journal reported at the time.

 Of the various criticisms aimed at pot, its potential to start wildfires is not usually among them. But not all dangers are obvious. I just read about the danger of eating too much melon. Pope Paul II in 1471 died in the Vatican from a fit of apolexy after indulging his appetite for melons, writes historian Ross King in The Bookseller of Florence.

On the other hand, “some — mainly the pontiff’s critics — said that he had died [of a stroke] whilst being sodomized by a page boy,” according to Wikipedia. Another unrecognized danger, I suppose.

Pope Paul II

Once upon a time, I taught this possum proper table manners.  🙂

Getting him to eat with a knife and fork instead of his fingers was the biggest challenge. 

More oddities. Last February,  this blog reported: “The oddest West Marin news in the past fortnight came in the Feb. 3 Point Reyes Light. Here it is word for word. ‘Sheriff’s Call — Sunday, Jan.10: NICASIO: At 7:42 p.m. a woman who said she was moving to town from Southern California reported that someone who works at the post office was shooting metaphorical arrows, meaning witchcraft and sorcery, and that God had told her she needed to eradicate witchcraft and sorcery. She said the man was going to make her have demonic serpent offspring and she could not report him to his supervisor because the supervisor was likely in the same region of warlocks, and she wanted to assure deputies that she had not been struck by the arrows because she was protected by the blood of Jesus — she had an X-ray to prove it.'”

Postal sorcery seems to have now spread west. A sheriff’s call in the Aug. 11 Light reported: POINT REYES STATION: “A woman moving back to the area from Los Angeles said a former postal worker was tracking her with witchcraft and sending arrows to her head.” If it is the same woman, I hope the blood of Jesus is still protecting her.

Three roof rats scamper around our deck eating some of the seeds we’ve put out for wild birds. A professional gardener in town this week said the local roof-rat population “exploded” this year.

Roof rats take advantage of our bird ‘sanctuary’  in more than one way. Here a roof rat drinks from our birdbath. The roof rat’s pale underside helps distinguish it from brownish-gray Norway rats. Despite their name, Norway rats are believed to have originated in Asia and spread westward through Russia. Once in Europe, Norway rats in the 18th century were inadvertantly introduced worldwide when they hid on trading ships, often in the cargo.

Norway rats are sometimes referred to as sewer rats because they are often found in big city sewers. Here a sewer rat pokes its head out its front door. Norway rats can damage homes with their gnawing and can spread diseases. MPHonLine photo

Doreen Miao and I were neighbors for at least a couple of decades, but I never got to really know her until her life’s difficulties were compounded by a freak traffic accident on Highway 1 north of the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road on Oct. 25, 2010.

I have only just now learned that she died peacefully at home this past April 26 with her caregiver Tina, her sister Amy from Mendocino County, and her sister Vida, from New Jersey, present. Here, as a memorial, is a synopsis of a posting I wrote about her 10 years ago.

Heroically cheerful despite bizarrely bad luck, Doreen Miao, then 57, and her dog Tully after her release from the hospital in 2010.

I first met Doreen after she was the human victim when a deer bolted in front of a passing car. The car hit the deer and threw it onto Doreen as she walked her dog Tully beside the road. Doreen later said that all she remembered was walking beside Highway 1 and then being in an ambulance.

Photographer Marty Knapp, who at the time lived on nearby Tank Road, told the Highway Patrol, as well as me, he saw the oncoming car, saw the buck and heard the crash but did not see it. Marty said he was not immediately aware that Doreen was lying on the ground, but two neighbors who could see her rushed over to help.

Marty added he felt certain the car hit the deer and didn’t hit Doreen. The sound of the impact was what one would expect if a car traveling 25 mph were to hit a 200-pound buck, he explained —  far louder than if a pedestrian were grazed. Despite the blow, the blacktailed deer managed to recross the highway and disappear. The driver stopped and told officers he’d hit a deer, but he was not aware of Doreen’s involvement. His car received only minor damage, the Highway Patrol noted.

Doreen, meanwhile, was knocked down and suffered a compound fracture to one leg, a broken clavicle, and rib damage. She then spent six days in Marin General Hospital, using a walker when she left. Doreen had already been dealing with an inability to straighten her fingers — a result of rheumatoid arthritis.

A native of Shanghai, Doreen lived most of her life in the United States. At the time of the accident she walked her dog Tully to the post office and back almost every day. Her three-mile round trip was mostly over steep hills.

After the accident, Tully, a miniature Australian Shepherd, returned to the post office where townspeople recognized him. Vicki Leeds of Cabaline tack shop took Tully and Doreen’s cat Maui to the Point Reyes Animal Hospital. After a week away, Tully and Maui joyfully returned home. And despite her injuries, Doreen was heroically joyful to also be back in Tomasini Canyon.