Avalon, Catalina - May 10th 2007

AVALON - FROM THE PIER ON THURSDAY

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 by Jeff Stanford/L.A. Times

Most of you know that our son Jimmy lives in Avalon, on Catalina Island, with his girlfriend Sandra. Jimmy was out fishing Thursday when he first saw the smoke and I believe Sandra was at a ranch or stable outside of Avalon working with some horses. We talked with Jimmy about dusk Thursday evening as he was waiting at the pier with Sandra's brother Gregor. They had her cat and bird there with them, in cages, but didn't know exactly where Sandra was at the time. Apparently she showed up at the pier somewhat later and they were all evacuated on a Catalina Express boat at 11 P.M. They're staying with Sandra's sister in Southgate, so, everybody's safe & well, thankfully, and the beautiful historic town of Avalon has now been spared too.

I was also happy to learn that the first Bald Eagle chicks to hatch naturally on Catalina (earlier this year) since DDT wiped out the native populations decades ago were not harmed in the fire. However, it is not yet known what effects the fire will have on the endangered Island Kit Fox population, which is hanging on by a thread.

Fire season is upon us very early this year and Southern California, including our San Benardino Mountains, is a tinder box. Big Bear is in a virtual tie for its driest winter on record with 5.63 inches of precipitation when our average is 20.68 inches.

I'm just hoping for a good Monsoon Summer that gets us so wet the lightning can't ignite anything.

I don't know how life is going for all you other folks but there never seems to be a dull moment in our lives anymore. I'm reminded again of the old Roman curse, "May you live in interesting times". And it looks to me like times are getting more interesting by the day!

Now, where have we been all these weeks???

More computer problems! Somehow a piece of malignant high-risk spyware (one which I could find no way to remove) got past Norton and infected my computer. When I bought this computer in January it came with a free upgrade to Windows Vista which I was leary of installing because of possible compatibilty problems with some of my older software. Well, the spyware spurred me on to wipe my drive and start clean with Vista, and, just as I suspected, several of my programs were not compatible. I'm still rebuilding files and re-installing updated versions of my software. I finally have Photoshop installed again so maybe I can catch up a bit now on what's been going on around here.