Once Upon a Time In California (Time Travel)

Rosalinda, la voz melodiosa, ella canta las viejas canciones. Y sólo puedo oírola.
Debo volver a los días perdidos, los viejos tempos en California. 

Rosalinda, she of the melodious voice, sings the old songs. And only I can hear her.
I must go back to lost days, the old days in California.
 
Un día, cuando aprenda a escuchar con sólo mi corazón, su melodía una vez más me llevarás a mi amor.
One day, when I learn to listen with only my heart, her tune will once more carry me home to my love.

                        
Time travellers need helpful tour books. UCSC professor, famed journalist, and  California State Librarian,  Kevin Starr, has a true sense of California. He's more than a superb historian, he's a born story teller. Starr weaves together a tale that includes not only the appeal of the state - it's agricultural promise, natural beauties, ethnic diversity, and economic potential - but also it's historical exploitation.

 If you read only one history of the state, make it Starr's California: A History (Modern Library Chronicles) 

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 Other volumes on my California Favorites Book Shelf

  

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Discovering a Little Delta History in Discovery Bay (San Francisco Bay)

The most recent Enchanted by Sewing Audio/Podcast is a sewing duologue between me and Susan in this glorious California Delta setting. You can download it to a mobile device, or simply listen on the web while you're doing something else.

Tule Fog has been both helping and hindering locals in the Delta
for over four thousand years

We often zip through the delta area of the San Francisco Bay, on our way to or from the mountains. This month I took my time with the rural, delta scenery on a day field trip to hangout at
 my buddy Susan's house for a chummy lunch and sewing afternoon. Susan lives in Discovery Bay, a rural-edge  community near Livermore, along the banks of the historic California Delta water system - where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers flow into the San Francisco Bay.

When I lit on the windmill above, I knew I'd found a time travel portal back to an era of freshly plowed fields, misty skies and well-loved farm houses. It spoke of California in another age, a time before silicon when fruits and nuts reigned supreme.

Discovery Bay emerged from barley and potato fields in 1964, but it still looks very agricultural 'round about. The area is still rich agricultural land, second only to California’s Great Central Valley, which still feeds many parts of the world. You can imagine that wonderful soil being washed down the great rivers and depositing itself in the valleys here. Nowadays with a lot of land zoned agricultural, I wonder if you’d be able to convert agriculturally zoned land to housing?

Humans have inhabited the Delta for at least 4,300 years. Before European contact, the Maidu and Miwok people benefited from the rich soil, just like the later farmers. These early inhabitants harvested foods and wildlife that grew and fed here. They also gathered the native tule reeds that grew in the marshy areas hereabout. They used the tules for boats, houses, and fabric for clothing.

Next time I go for a sewing day with Susan, maybe we'll keep out eyes open for tules. I wonder if there are any Vogue patterns we could alter to sew up from tules?

When I drove to Susan’s I witnessed a mild tule fog. If you don’t live in California, you’ve probably never seen anything like this soupy fog. It’s unique to the area. Tule fog happens between November and March, after we've had a good soaking rain. The moisture then rises up and hangs in the air, where it becomes the leading cause of weather-related accidents in California. It turns out that over the past three decades, tule fogs are decreasing.

Wouldn't you think that would be a good thing?

It turns out that local fruit and nut crops, an important part of the economy, have been impacted by this lack of moisture.

Bring back the tules!

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Web Resources

Listen in on my sewing day with Susan in the Enchanted by Sewing Audio/Podcast 

Discovery Bay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Bay,_California

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramento–San_Joaquin_River_Delta

http://www.seecalifornia.com/california-cities/discovery-bay.html

Tule Fog What is it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tule_fog
Impact of decreasing Tule fog on crops http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/As-Central-Valley-fog-disappears-fruit-nut-5496710.php

Postcard from San Luis Obispo: SLO Time Travel Via The Amtrak Station

The Amtrak station in San Luis Obispo (SLO) is one of my favorite time portals. How about hopping aboard a Period Pilots time travel flight to... visit the Southern California citrus groves in 1933?


Your time travel tour allows you to checkout acres of lovely scented orange and lemon trees beneath the towering San Gabriel Mountains before the development that followed World War II. Take a Model T over to Malibu for a spot of horseback riding along the beautiful uncrowded shoreline. Your day will end with a campout on the slopes of that grand patriarch of mountains Old Baldy.  

A Time Portal for Arachnida

Click on the illustration above

To enlarge it

I've never seen spider webs quite like these I spied at Edgewood Park last week.


Time portals for Arachnida, perhaps?

A Time Portal for Arachnida

I've never seen spider webs quite like these I spied at Edgewood Park last week.


Time portals for Arachnida, perhaps?

Time Travel: The Ultimate Escape

The she-bears great paws stepped unhesitatingly into the whirling vortex of the time portal. The twenty-first century had lost one more California native. Mariah's own feet, however, seemed incapable of moving forward. There was no longer any thing, or any one, tying her to this place. What was holding her back from making her own journey back to 1893?

Very slowly, the woman reached out to part the clump of sage, behind which, the great bear’s body had  disappeared just moments before.

Take the plunge yourself. CLICK on the illustration above, 

to fully enjoy the time-travelling details.

Time Portal: Vertigo

Inspired by a prompt at A Year in the Life of an Art Journal

What is more likely to send a gal spinning through time than an episode of vertigo?

Time Portal Guardians: The Mystery Revealed

A couple of days ago, I posted an art journal entry titled Guardians of a Time Portal. Just what are my two cats doing when they're sleeping their time away amongst the roses on the driveway, I asked?


My friend,Judy Gosnell  was able to answer that question in a flash. That gal is a natural when it comes to time travel. What era other than ancient Egypt, when cats were worshipped properly, would a cat consider worthy of her guardianship?

Stop on by our driveway the next time you're in the mood to join Pharohs retinue. Just don't forget a little offering of mackerel to placate the guardian at the gate.

Clearly our furry companion Olivia, sees herself as a later day Bastet. It's certainly nice of her to spend so much time in the modern era when she could be chasing mice through Pharoh's graneries. I feel honored.


No, not honored enough to open up ANOTHER can of mackarel. You can wait until breakfast-time, Olivia.


I created the illustration above in Photoshop, using photos I took at the British Museum. In four trips to London we've never missed a visit to that delicious treasure trove.

Time Portal: Stopping in for a brew at The Time & Time Again

Just another British pub?

Maybe.

But have you got the nerve to open the door?

Could be a special locally brewed ale, a piece of Cheshire cheddar, and the most delicious meat pie you ever tasted.

And if you're really lucky, you might just happen by on a day when we specialize in Victorian Values, Cromwellian Conundrums or Tudor Time Travel.

Guardians of a Time Portal: Fantasy Cat Quilt

Don't think you're gonna paw past MY way

Without a little donation to the gods 

That guard your house

And keep those old mice at bay.

I used to think my kitties were just sleeping their day away in the sun. But just recently I learned that they are actually the guardians of a local time portal. In their case a little donation, of the right sort, will get me farther than just on to my back door without suffering a swipe on the ankle.

It will take me back to times long past.

Just what era would a cat be caring for?

Time Portal: Another Way to Spin Through Time

Click on the illustration above to try a spin with this portal

The Old Rose Cathedral Window 

of Durnsmuir Haugh

Most of yon stained glass winders were taken down in Cromwell's Time.
But there was somethin' about this yer 'un that did foil even the most determined of them Reformers.
They do say as three different Roundheads tried to take her down, and all three died in the trying.
It was a woman who convinced 'em to just leave her be.
The Red Rose of Durnsmuir, folks 'round here call her.


The womenfolk 'round here do say the Red Rose, she's got powers.
Codswallop sez I, tis just an old Rose winder, 
         pretty though she may be when the light shines through her panes,
       especially so on the night of a neaps tide.


And though sometimes when those days do come when there's bare a tick o' difference betwtixt the ebb and flow,
I do think I see the old Red Rose spinning with the wind,
And then, well I just puts that down to the ale at the Swallow and Dove, and I go home by 'tother road.