Sixty-Fifth Birthday ~ November 14, 2010

Jim & Peg ~ Gone 'American Gothic' in Utah?

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

My 65th Birthday gift, a beautiful sturdy pitchfork, inspired this tongue-in-cheek parody of the severe tone of Grant Wood's 1930 painting, 'American Gothic', which depicts a 19th Century farmer with his daughter in front of their farmhouse.

Well, I'm not quite old enough to be Peggy's father, she's only seven years younger than I, but we had fun making this image anyway, and we are portraying a husband and wife team here.

Peggy has an authentic weary expression on her face because she was getting tired of holding up that heavy basket of apples as I experimented with camera settings and tripod adjustments while making several different exposures.

We think her strained expression suggests something of the difficulty in being a hard working farm wife married to the ornery old coot she's standing next to, and Peg says she's also amused by the way her glasses slid down her nose to give it that pinched look.

The apples, from my mother's orchard (directly behind where the camera was located), were later baked into my birthday pie and Peg also made a cheesecake for the occasion.

Our son, Jimmy, who shares the same birthday is here too, so he and I conjured up a bar-b-que under a canopy out of the rain which began falling shortly after the photo was made.

The home-cooked food was delicious; my birthday dinner consisted of a deliberately tiny, lean, and tender steak, asparagus stalks grilled with rosemary, thyme, & pepper (Jimmy's recipe), a small baked potato dressed in olive oil and cracked pepper, a small broccoli salad with red onion, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, raisins, and other secret ingredients, and, of course, a sliver of Peggy's scrumptious wheat-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, apple pie with allspice, nutmeg, and fresh ginger. Oh, and another little sliver of that irresistable cheesecake with the graham cracker crust.

And, I received gifts too, the pitchfork, a pair of Carhart workpants, thick winter socks, and some extremely warm & soft insulated elk hide gloves.

Jimmy's gifts included a new amp for his electric guitar and he spent much of the day entertaining us while I was also enjoying a couple of glasses of Moab Brewery's tasty Dead Horse Amber Ale (the last of my 'growler'), and later some nice Merlot.

I can assure you, a very enjoyable day was had by all (especially grandma I think), and I appreciate more every day what a rare and priviledged time we live in, very unlike the recent past, and the very near future.

~enjoy each precious moment~

Click on painting to enlarge - 'American Gothic'

circa 1930 by Grant Wood

Big Brother Raids R-Own-Ranch & Condemns Property!!!

At Home On The Smith Family's

'R-Own-Ranch' in 1980 Click on photo to enlarge - ©1980/2010 jim otterstrom

Photo left to right; Thelma Smith, Edgar Smith (gramps), Karen Smith (Miller), Peggy Otterstrom, Jim Otterstrom, Ed Smith, Debra Smith, Clark Smith, with Boots & Chewbacca in front.

Just before Peggy and I moved to Big Bear this is where we lived, in that army surplus quonset hut, on the Smith family's 60 acre 'R-Own-Ranch', a secluded paradise two miles up a dirt road from Mulholland Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu Canyon Road.

We moved here shortly after we were married, and the ranch is also where we started our own family, Jimmy came into the world during our time here.

We were quite happy living alongside this down to earth Old Calabasas family who welcomed us into their lives as if we were born & raised right there with them.

Most of us worked for the Post Office, either in Calabasas, or Woodland Hills, which is how we became friends, and we held many unforgettable postal gatherings up at the ranch---far from the rat-race---where people could relax and let their hair down without bothering the neighbors, because there weren't any.

At these large pot-luck get-togethers there was often live music provided by musician friends---from young rockers, to aging big band era players---the majority of whom were working at the Post Office too. The family also---long before my days there---had rigged up a fenced (with chicken wire), night-lighted (with salvaged flourescent fixtures), volleyball court, Ma & Pa Kettle style, where, old & young alike, would often play into the wee hours of the morning.

On more normal quieter nights, the family always gathered in the living room of the original old home-built house where four generations of Smiths would gregariously indulge themselves in hours of playing Scrabble, Monopoly, or any number of board, dice, or card games, until way into the night, and there was also a game room with a pool table off the living room overlooking the vegetable garden.

I loved sitting in on those games and listening to family tales about things like hiking miles to the old Calabasas School on a trail which led from the ranch, over the mountains, and down to the quaint little town of Calabasas. But, I don't believe I ever once beat my ol' buddy, Ed Smith, or his sister, Karen, at a game of Scrabble. Those two were just too damned sharp, but then again, they played the game almost every night for much of their lives.

That's the kind of thing families used to do when they lived in remote rural areas, far from the nearest neighbor, before cable or satellite TV, or computers.

I was absolutely charmed by this unassuming family of self-reliant old-fashioned folks who still lived---even during the 1970s, '80s, & early '90s---much as they had throughout the 1940s & '50s. I felt like I had come home, and I still think of them as family, and their 'R-Own-Ranch' as the country home I always longed for.

During our few years there most of the activity centered around the main house, which apparently came into existence around 1927---long before there were enforced building codes in those unincorporated areas---with several rooms obviously added on, maybe as late as the early 1950s. Also, of course, was the war surplus quonset where Peggy & I lived---which had been erected in 1956---35 years before the city of Calabasas was incorporated. And there were a couple of small trailers there too, available to family members who sometimes came and went depending upon their situations at any given time.

Living at the ranch was always an adventure, and definitely not for the faint of heart. The day we moved in was during the midst of a wet winter, and the private road leading up to the ranch had just washed out about a 1/2 mile down from the house, so Peggy and I had to trudge back & forth up that last muddy 1/2 mile with all of our belongings. That would've been late 1979, the year I bought my first 4-wheel drive Toyota, for obvious reasons.

The Smiths owned a tiny, ancient, rickety Caterpillar bulldozer which could, periodically, be patched into some semblance of working order to assist with road repair during washouts, which came in handy because the 1.2 mile dirt section of the road was almost completely wiped out twice during our 3 year stay at the ranch. Those are rewarding and memorable experiences in my life, working side by side with the Smiths to rebuild their road, and this is also when Peggy learned how to use a chain saw and I got to know her rugged hard-working side.

Then there were the fires. A couple of years before we moved to Big Bear a fire broke out to the north of us in the middle of the night, near highway 101, and we were awakened by a call from the fire department warning us to be prepared because it was moving in our direction.

There was a fire hydrant on the property near the main house---the cost of which was surely added to the R-Own-Ranch tax assessment, but the fire department would no longer allow their equipment up the narrow road to protect just one old house. They did however offer to provide us with some fire hose, a nozzle, and a bit of safety instruction if we wished to defend the place ourselves, an offer we gladly accepted.

Over that tense ensuing day the fire moved slowly toward us and some of the Smiths decided to drive down and talk with the firefighters stationed by the big fancy houses at the lower paved section of the road near Mulholland Drive, to see if they might change their minds about sending a truck up. What happened instead, was that a sheriff wouldn't allow the guys back up the road, which left me and Peggy, along with Thelma Smith, probably in her late 50s then, and her son Clark, in his early to mid teens, to defend the place.

I suggested to Peggy that she should leave and told her I was going to stay and fight the fire. She said, "I'm not going anywhere without you"! So, Peg and I followed the fire department advice, wrapping our heads & faces in wet towels as the fire advanced over the hill and moved in upon us. We kept the house and everything around it soaking wet, and when the smoke got too thick we'd adjust the nozzle to a fine spray over our heads and breathe, through the wet towels, the oxygen that was emanating from the misting spray of water falling around us. A few times I had to leave Peggy in charge of the hefty fire nozzle so I could run back to the quonset and use the garden hose to extinguish small fires that had ignited in knot-holes of the leafless deciduous 'Trees of Heaven' growing along the side of the metal building, which was otherwise rather impervious to fire. That's when I discovered how strong and courageous Peggy is.

The fire burned around us for a couple of hours but eventually moved on and the Smith homestead was spared for the time being. Then, in March of 1983, just a few days before Peggy & I moved away, another fire headed toward the ranch, and we were prepared to man the hoses again, but the previous fire had cleared most of the underbrush so this one just burned on past us.

Sadly, in 1996, a third fire finally burned the original family home to the ground while the Smiths stood by helplessly at the bottom of the road where the police, once again, wouldn't allow them up to defend their uninsurable property.

The quonset hut and trailers survived though, and members of the family, including Thelma's now 70 year-old brother, Lloyd Smith, and his son Gary, continued living on what was left of their scrappy beloved ranch, until, completely unannounced and unexpected, "on July 8th, 2010, the Calabasas Community Development Department, its building officials, code enforcement officers, other employees, personnel and agents, Los Angeles County Animal Control, and armed Sheriff’s deputies — a total of 14 people, eight of whom still remain unidentified despite requests for the City to identify them — descended en masse on one of Cold Creek’s founding families in the heart of undeveloped upper Stokes Canyon, 1.2 miles off the beaten track"*.

*Excerpted from the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation August, 2010 newsletter. Read the whole creepy story about the raid here.

In more decent times and places, in an America once striving toward democracy, these human beings---long-time historic pioneering residents of their community---would've been treated with a modicum of courtesy and respect, instead of like common criminals. Their old non code-compliant homestead would've been considered grandfathered, and partially exempt from today's strict regulations, and they would've been officially notified as to whatever health & safety issues required immediate attention and given some time to come into compliance.

But no, 11 days after the raid the Smith family's electricity was cut off, and 7 days after that the water too, leaving 70 year-old Lloyd, and his son Gary, homeless. The bastards even came and capped off the fire hydrant!!!

Because, as you can plainly see, the Calabasas of today is a miracle of modern Capitalism, where destructive profiteering defines progress, and appallingly ugly subdivisions of enormous disgusting "mansions" are smeared all over the once lovely hillsides that the Smith kids wandered on their way to school.

There's no room in Calabasas any more for down home folks like the Smith family, or in the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains for that matter, it's all gone to shit now! And the robber barons who run the world these days don't even have the decency to come in and make the family a fair offer for their land. They just send in a bunch of lackey bureaucrats to do a little dirty work, raiding, condemning, and evicting elderly life-long residents, probably figuring they'll be able to get what they want for almost nothing, while these people are suffering under duress. And I sorely suspect they may well succeed, because ordinary folks just don't have the resources it takes to fight powerful monied interests.

Interestingly, this raid was conducted around the same time an out-of-state owner of 300 acres somewhere in the vicinity of the Smith property, was inquiring about having his land incorporated into the city of Calabasas for development purposes, and would it surprise anybody if the Smith acreage just happens to lie between his land and the rest of what is already contiguous to Calabasas?

Whether this turns out to be the case or not, you can bet your ass that somebody's got an eye on making big bucks off the corpse of R-Own-Ranch, where generations of Smiths, through their labors of love, toiled away for 60 some years on their remote little plot of paradise, enlarging their home, one room at a time, planting gardens, building ponds, repairing roads, paying taxes, and raising their kids, all by themselves, without the need for pre-schools, playdates, or ritalin.

As for the people who live in all those sterile new giant Calabastard enclaves---those anti-coyote, anti-clothesline, anti-cesspool civilized newcomers whose filth & excrement flows through a nasty maze of pipes to some oft malfunctioning sewage treatment plant before being dumped into the Santa Monica Bay; whose countless Hummers, Escalades, and Navigators foul the air above the sacred mountains I once called home---I feel sorry for you and can't even imagine living in one of those oversized crapboxes and calling it a home.

In my eyes R-Own-Ranch is a victim of the same corporate driven oppression which has subverted democracy all across America by buying off the government, rewriting the rules to benefit the rich, and redistributing the wealth of a once thriving middle class---who were the backbone of the country---to a small percentage of the population, which is why the gap between the rich & poor is wider today than ever before, and growing by the hour. Pure raw evidence of the class wars the entire world is in the midst of.

And, for the record, these are my own opinions, and neither my thoughts nor my memories were verified, approved, or authorized by any member of the Smith family.

My anger and indignation over human beings subjected to this kind of treatment is my own, and I'll speak my mind about it anytime I damned well please, especially when it hits this close to home.

Finally, to all the members of the Smith family; to Ed & Cindy, Karen & Dan, and all your kids; to Thelma, Lloyd, & Gary, and all the rest of you. Peggy and I hope you will find a way to get 'R-Own-Ranch' untangled from this nightmare. We will always feel like a part of your family and this is very painful for us too.

Edgar Smith in 1980Click to enlarge - © 1980/2010 jim otterstrom

The late, Edgar Smith, patriarch of R-Own-Ranch who bought the place in the 1940s.

'Smitty' in 1980Click to enlarge - © 1980/2010 jim otterstrom

The, late, 'Smitty', son-in-law of Edgar, husband to Thelma, was the sole rural letter carrier for Calabasas, delivering the mail to every residence for several decades.

Peggy in October of 1981 Click to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

A very pregnant Peggy, with our goat, in front of the R-Own-Ranch vegetable garden in October of '81.

Peggy on Friday, November 13th, 1981 Click to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

Peggy, in front of the quonset with Smith family dog, Chewbacca, about 16 hours before our son Jimmy was born, and check out the cat on the tin roof above the door.

Quonset Bathroom - 1981Click to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

The quonset bathroom during a facelift I was doing on the place while we lived there.


Remodeling Our Bedroom - 1981
Click on photo to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

Ed Smith, grandson of Edgar, son of Smitty & Thelma, helps me (in the middle) with the drywall in our bedroom while, Debra Smith, looks on from the doorway to the bathroom.

Peggy - 1981 Click to enlarge - © 1981/2010 jim otterstrom

Peggy, just days away from motherhood, poses for me in our newly remodeled bedroom in the quonset hut at R-Own-Ranch.

Postscript

If you think this post simply describes an unfortunate isolated incident please follow this link to see a short audio slideshow about ex-Marine & Viet Nam vet, Joseph Diliberti, a stunningly creative human being who may lose his 4 acre property in San Diego County, as well as his magnificent hand-crafted ceramic home, under somewhat similar circumstances.

This kind of stuff happens every day, to good people all around the world, who are victimized by the thievery of empire builders who are now beginning to run out of resources to steal; and by classism, elitism, racism, and sexism.

If you lived along the Yangtze River in China, they came and took millions of your ancestral homes for a huge dam to power the industrialists factories, an engineering monstrosity which, at best, will silt over in a dozen decades or so. If you live in Tennessee, they may soon come for the coal under your feet---if they haven't already done so---removing the mountian tops around your home, destroying the landscape and displacing the wildlife who live there, while ruining the watershed and poisoning your water and your air. If you live in Sumatra, and survive a tsunami, they will come and confiscate your land, replacing your fishing villages with luxury resorts. If you live in Central America, they will come and confiscate your homeland for banana or coffee plantations and put you to work in sweatshops making designer shoes or T-shirts for a few bucks a week. If you were a Native American, they might have brought you gifts, like blankets intentionally infected with smallpox, to kill off your people and take over your land with much less resistance. If you live in Iraq, they will come and destroy your country to procure the oil you're sitting on.

And the list of victimization goes on forever, from East Timor, to the Tar Sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of America; from the brutality of the British, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, & American empires, to the murderous history of religious fanaticism; from the Crusades, to witch burning in America, and the horrific radical muslim fundamentalism of the Taliban.

I believe, as Dan Quinn wrote in his best-selling novel, Ishmael, that some humans are takers, and some are leavers, and for the past 10,000 years or so, the takers have been winning big, but I think they are running out of time. The planet can't afford them anymore...

FIVE YEAR BLOGGIVERSARY!

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2010 jim otterstrom

On February 26, 2005 I sat down at the computer and created Earth Home Garden out of thin air, and now 5 years have passed and this is my 659th post.

In many ways the blog is not what I had envisioned back then but it has also become something far more personal and meaningful for me than I could've imagined.

Earth Home Garden was conceived as a place where Peggy and I could share our ongoing experiments with living more self-reliant sustainable lifestyles---something we've had in common since we first met 30 some years ago---which we started focusing on more acutely over the past twenty years.

As it reads in our Blogger profile, "Earth Home Garden represents what we love in life; our bountiful planet, Earth, and all her natural diversity; our cozy little cabin Home, and the family it has sheltered for 29 years; and the Garden around us which nurtures so many native creatures and helps feed us as well".

So my intent was to write here specifically about nature, homesteading & food production on a small property; about do it yourself home maintenance, crafting and sewing; and about moving toward a salvage based personal economy where what we acquire is mostly used, second-hand, or recycled, whether it be household items or other materials. And, I have posted quite a bit on those topics.

However, it didn't take long for me to realize that Earth Home Garden also represents something more than that, because, also involved, is my oddball decision making process which has driven me to wholeheartedly embrace big changes in our lives, such as living car-free.

An innate sense that we are one with the earth (and the entire cosmos for that matter) tells me that what happens to our ecosystem also happens to me (and to those I love). Therefore my perception of our culture, and the world around me, is highly subjective, and I strive to make decisions accordingly. I've often been advised to be more objective but I believe, as author Barry Lopez suggested, that "the objectification of everything non-human" is what has allowed us to treat our world with such callous impersonal disregard.

Consequently, Earth Home Garden also became a place for me to bare my radical ecologist soul, and vent my frustration with the omnipresent destruction of all that which I hold so dearly.

Surprisingly enough, I've received as many enthusiastic or supportive comments on my sociopolitical diatribes and rants as I have on photos of nature & wildlife, or posts about pine-needle basketry, acorn processing, and gardening, etc., and I've made far more than a few friends here who I feel very close to.

For the past month I'd been contemplating ending Earth Home Garden with today's post, but after reviewing all the pictures, and some of the posts, I realize how much I still enjoy doing this when I find the time and energy.

Still, I must say, writing is like pulling teeth for me, it hurts until all the words are out there...

I love reading well written words, and I've learned over the years that those words are never going to come easy for me, but I'm often strongly affected by images---the fun part of blogging which I truly enjoy---so most of my posts are inspired by a picture. Somehow, when I look at an image that interests me, the words start coming along easier. It's why I became interested in photography in the first place I guess, so I might be able to express my thoughts or feelings with some clarity of focus.

I have my camera with me constantly and there are times, when the light is right and my head is clear, that everything is photogenic to me, and then several days may go by when nothing looks interesting at all. Because of this reality, I began going through my old photos, slides, and artwork to find material for blogposts when I'm not otherwise feeling inspired or creative.

For me, this happy accident of a method has added a depth to Earth Home Garden that weaves today, and sixty four years ago, together into an ever-evolving artful record now spanning much of my life.

And blogging in this way has reconnected me with many old friends and created new opportunities in my life, and the lives of my kids too. Our daughter is now living in Santa Barbara, working on a boat there, and attending college, partly because of a friend I reconnected with after posting some old pictures and stories on the blog.

Something else I've learned while blogging is that any kind of preconceived continuity is almost impossible to maintain because, "life is what happens while you're busy making plans", and some of the constant disruptions and distractions which come along can be long term life changing events for an entire family, such as the car accident our son was in 4 1/2 years ago that left him legally blind.

And, like everyone else alive these past five years, we've had much to deal with; family members battling cancer; my stepfather passing away from complications due to Alzheimer's Disease; our kids struggling in today's economy.

We've had the kids and their significant others, including the dogs, staying with us on several occasions. We have friends & neighbors in similar situations, or in economic dire straits, or with health problems, but much of this doesn't go on the blog because people don't want their lives made that public.

Then there's the normal social obligations of having friends, of being part of a neighborhood, and a community, and when you add all that to the everyday responsibilities of caring for your property, your gardens, your animals, and each other, it's often hard to make time for blogging, which is why this is my first post in almost a month. And why I'm often negligent too at responding to comments or checking in with my blog friends.

Once again, I apologize for that.

Still, all things considered, when I look at the mere 100 pictures (out of more than 700 posted thus far) which make up the composite photo above, and think about all the posts they inspired, about the lives, memories, and collective span of time they represent, I'm truly astounded that I've managed to post almost seven times that much content here in this brief but tumultuous 5 years.

My, how time flies when we're having fun!

Will You Still Need Me...

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

The Beatles asked us that question 42 years ago, when I was all of 22, and I can remember trying to envision any of us at the ancient age of 64.

Well, here I am, now an official member of the Old Buzzard Club, by Beatle standards anyway, and I don't have to imagine anymore, I can just look in the mirror at the reality of it all!

As for the answer to their question, I may be in luck. Peggy still says she needs me and I smell something good cooking down in the kitchen, which means I may be getting fed in a few minutes!

I'm feeling very fortunate today, half of the Beatles never made it to 64, and yet I'm getting ready to take a nice morning walk along the lake with my dear wife, Peg, and my sweet dog Dallas.

Plans for the rest of the day include making an apple pie together with some of the bucket full of apples a neighbor gave us off her tree. We're visiting with my old, old buddy, Charlie Melton (50 years as pals now), who came to celebrate the occasion with me, and tonight, the three of us are going out dancing to the great blues music of our friend Jimmy Reid.

I was officially sixty-four at exactly 5:11 A.M., just about the time I started putting this post together.

The Turkey Vulture photo was taken by me at the Moonridge Animal Park, here in Big Bear, in August, 2007. The animals at the park have been injured, or can no longer survive in the wild, for one reason or another, and this handsome ol' buzzard is one of the inhabitants there.

Friday Morning...

7:20 A.M. - Stanfield Marsh

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

Fog and clouds hung gracefully over the valley this morning as Peggy, Dallas, and I, made our way along the footbridge by Stanfield Marsh.

A few light sprinkles fell during our wanderings but not enough to soak through our layers of clothing.

We enjoyed intermittent drizzles throughout the day yesterday which continued overnight and seem to be moving on out this morning.

Our walk left me relaxed and appreciative of the warm fire that welcomed us home as I checked in on a couple of blog friends, Madcap, and Deb, who have both responded to the below meme of 37 questions.

I've decided to join them...

37 Random Things About Me

1. Do you like blue cheese? Yes, in fact I love it when the cheese in the fridge gets old and starts turning blue. First dibs on the mold!

2. Have you ever smoked? Yes, for 22 years, from ages 11 to 33, I picked it up from my mom. I've been a non-smoker for the past 30 years.

3. Do you own a gun? Yes, a 30/30 rifle.

4. What flavor Kool Aid is your favorite? I haven't tasted Kool-Aid in decades, but, when I was a kid I liked the lime flavored junk.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? I try not to visit doctors, I wish to die a natural death, nowhere near a hospital.

6. What do you think of hot dogs? I think they're absolutely disgusting, but, when I do eat one, it has mustard, onions, and sometimes, chili con carne.

7. Favorite Christmas movie? 'Miracle Down Under' with Dee Wallace and John Waters (1987).

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Coffee.

9. Can you do push-ups? A few.

10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? A cast brass sun-pendant my stepfather made for me. It's the only piece of jewelry I own, aside from my wedding ring.

11. Favorite hobby? Whichever one, of dozens, I'm currently involved with.

12. Do you have A.D.D? If you mean Anti-establishment Dissidence Disorder, then most definitely!

13. Do you wear glasses/contacts? Two or three pair!

14. Middle name? Steven.

15. Name thoughts at this moment? Is it beer-thirty yet?

16. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Coffee, beer, and tequila.

17. Current worry? Oh nothing major, except maybe the collapse of Western Civilization, and how that might affect my kids.

18. Current hate right now? Elitism, classism, and self-righteous judgement.

19. Favorite place to be? Home, in the garden.

20. How did you bring in the New Year? Celebrating with my wife and son until 12:01, when I promptly passed out.

21. Where would you like to go? Home, where I grew up, but it's not there anymore.

22. Name three people who will complete this? Madcap, Deb, and Jim (I consulted my crystal ball).

23. Do you own slippers? Yes, but I can never find them.

24 What color shirt are you wearing? A black long-sleeved t-shirt.

25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? Nope, too slippery, always sliding off the bed. Good old high-thread-count cotton for me.

26. Can you whistle? Yes, but nothing to brag about. I can't carry a tune.

27. Favorite Color? Blue & Green, equally.

28. What songs do you sing in the shower? Old hillbilly songs. Clementine, She'll Be Comin' 'Round The Mountain, On Top Of Old Smokey, etc.

29. Would you be a pirate? Only in the sense that RobinHood was a pirate, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. I've got no taste for rape, pillage, and plunder, our species has done more than enough of that crap!

30. Favorite Girl's Name? The one attached to my favorite girl, Peggy Sue, who, by the way, was named several years before the famous Buddy Holly song was written.

31. Favorite boy's name? Jim, handed down through generations of my family, to my father, to me, and to my son. Even my 100% Cherokee, great, great, great, grandfather was named James, James Drury (It was common practice for Native Americans of that time to adopt the names of European settlers and Drury is a French surname). James Drury was born of the Keetoowah Cherokee in Tennessee, in 1798, and died in Bradley County, Arkansas, in 1859, when the well he was digging caved in on him. His daughter, Nancy Jane Drury, also 100% Cherokee, was the mother of my tobacco-chewing great-grandma Garrison, whom I remember very well.

32. What's in your pocket right now? Reach in there and find out! ;~)

33. Last thing that made you laugh? My answer to question #32.

34. What vehicle do you drive? A 15 year-old DiamondBack Topanga Mountain Bike (as in bicycle).

35. Worst injury you've ever had? A shattered right leg from a 1978 motorcycle accident which required bone grafts and 14 months to heal.

36. Do you love where you live? I love the nature of the place, but I'm saddened by the ongoing overdevelopment and destruction of it.

37. How many TVs do you have in your house? None!

Everything Under The Sun...

Unfinished Drawing - Early 1970s

Click on drawing to enlarge - ©1974-2009 jim otterstrom

I've been spending the first week of 2009 trying to organize and de-clutter my life, starting with what I'll call the library, where the computer, my desk, our books, and the music collection reside.

There's a steel flat-file cabinet (post office surplus) in the room, where I keep a lifetime of paraphernalia, including old documents, photos, and other memorabilia associated with my odd plethora of interests (or obsessions maybe). Sixteen drawers of crap, each one 18 inches wide by 24 inches deep, and ranging in height from 2 inches to 1 foot.

There was a time, long, long ago, when these files were neatly organized and I could easily find whatever I might be looking for. As the years passed by though, and drawers began to overflow, stuff started getting filed randomly, wherever it would fit, until it became nearly impossible to find anything.

Among these treasures are more than 30 years of newspaper articles on the environment; on pollution and climate change, energy, transportation, population, organic and sustainable farming, native species, diversity and habitat loss, natural and man-made disasters, indigenous peoples and their fates, on urban renewal and habitat restoration, endangered species & recovery efforts, and countless other topics that I have felt the need to research.

Articles that led me to hundreds of books where I could delve deeper into what's good, or bad, or simply interesting about our culture, and about the problems we face, as I strive to understand how we got here, where we might be going, and what solutions we could pursue.

There are also articles about issues and causes I've been closely involved with, such as the Ward Valley Nuclear Waste Dump, and the Headwaters Forest Campaign, among many others, distant, and local.

I've always had a desire to write, and all this input has been fuel for my fire, but I must admit, I haven't honed my writing skills enough to meet my own expectations. My writing is still pretty clunky.

I'm only halfway through cleaning out the file cabinet but I've already found well over 100 letters I've personally written to presidents, vice-presidents, senators, congresspersons, and even The World Bank, on a huge variety of issues, from the GATT & NAFTA treaties, to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, nuclear arms reductions, renewable energy subsidies, the mountaintop mining of coal, and so much more.

This doesn't include another 100+ letters generated, in my name, by our long distance phone company, Working Assets, now CREDO.

And, of course, it also doesn't include the hundreds of online petitions and letters I've submitted in the past ten or so years

I'm exhausted just thinking about all the effort I've put into dialogue substantially ignored by my elected representatives, especially my eternal congressman, the honorable Republican, Jerry Lewis, who thanks me for my letters and then tells me why he voted in opposition to my wishes.

Still, as long as there is a centralized government, I would encourage that government to be---of the people, by the people, and for the people---so, I participate in this so-called democracy, exercising my freedom of speech, and I'll never stop speaking my mind, even if mine is not the majority opinion.

Now, to get back to the organizational task at hand, there's also drawers full of artwork by family and friends; drawings, paintings and photos, geneology documents and historical family pictures, old magazines with articles about the hot-rods & race cars my stepfather built, articles about music and musicians, magazine & newspaper articles about my family and I, collections of stamps from my decades at the post office, old posters, signs, & stickers that I've found artistically or socially relevant to my unconventional vision, and just all kinds of other garbage utterly meaningless to anyone but myself.

Yes, this stuff is clutter, but it feeds my imagination and my creativity, so it looks like I'll only be able to part with maybe 25% of it, if I'm lucky. Not very Zen of me!

I'm having fun going through it all though, reminiscing about past efforts, accomplishments, and failures, and trying to organize it all in some rational meaningful way.

The most fun in all this is rediscovering something long forgotten, some relic from the distant past, like the above drawing, started in my 20s, but never finished.

I wonder what it would've looked like completed, but then again, is anything ever done?

I've decided I rather enjoy my drawing, and my life, in their unfinished states...

Just Another Brick In The Wall...

Downtown Los Angeles - 1972

Click on photo to enlarge - © 1972 jim otterstrom

Downtown Alameda - 2007
Click on photo to enlarge -© 2007 jim otterstrom

Brick wall photos, old & new.

I was a newly-hired Postman (a Special Delivery Messenger to be exact), back in the early 1970s when I took the "No Comment" photo at the top, but I still had delusionary ambitions of making a living as a free-lance photographer/artist/craftsman (before I realized that would also entail becoming a businessman, something I have absolutely zero talent for).

In those days I mounted, signed, framed, and hung my pictures in any joint that was interested in having art 'for sale' hanging on their walls, and I actually sold quite a few too, at funky little galleries, restaurants, saloons, grocery stores, and craft fairs.

At that point in time, when I prepared my photos for framing, I always rounded off the corners of the prints (using a quarter as a template for the radius), then sanded a thin white border around the edges before mounting them on black mat board (you might say it was my signature style of matting).

Those ancient mounted prints are either long gone, or, too deteriorated to display anymore, so, just for fun, I thought I'd try to duplicate the look of my primitive old technique in Photoshop.

So, if you enlarge the 1972 photo at the top, you will see it presented exactly as it was 35 years ago, when I was 27 years old.

Then I decided to take one of my recent photos, from this past November, and 'mount' it the same way.

There's 35 years of life in between those two pictures, yet they look to me as if they could've come from the same roll of film.

"Some things change very slowly, if they ever change at all."

But the art of photography has sure changed. In 1972 you actually had to acquire some skills & knowledge to make a good picture, where any of today's digital cameras capture near perfect images in simple point & shoot auto-mode. I still like to compose my shots with manual settings though, which is why I have a digital camera that allows me to do so.

I love the way color photos look against a black background (similar to the way Earth looks against the blackness of space) which is also why I chose this particular blog template (although I've noticed that, on some laptops, Earth Home Garden comes up with a white background??).

The days are short and the weather's cold, so it's as good a time as any to be messing around with photographs, old or new.

The Los Angeles photo was taken in 1972 with a Nikon F2, and probably a 24mm wide-angle lens. All exposure data is long forgotten.

The Alameda photo was taken on November 12th, 2007, with an 8 megapixel Canon S5IS, in manual mode. Settings - ISO 80, f /8.0, 1/160 second, 32.2mm zoom (35mm equivalent).

A Father's Day Letter To Claude Hampson

DAD - IN THE EARLY 1980s

Click on photo to enlarge - photo credit unknown

It was a much different world back in 1960!

For me, it was a world of cars, girls, & AM Radio, in that order, and I was working at my stepdad's autobody shop after school, on Saturdays, and during summer vacation.

This was no ordinary body & fender joint, and dad was no Bondo© hack! He was a master metalcrafter, among many other things, and worked specifically on imports, which were still rare in those days, and mostly owned by car enthusiast perfectionists who doted & fussed over their beloved machines.

The shop was always full of pretty sports cars, like MGs, Triumphs, Austin Healys, Alpha Romeos, Porsches, and Jaguars.

And, very often with outrageously expensive exotics too, from gull-wing Mercedes 300 SLs, to Ferraris, Bugattis, Aston Martins, Alpha Bats, Facel Vegas, Lamborghinis. or AC Ace/Bristols (before Carroll Shelby modified those same chassis & bodies to accomodate Ford V-8s and created the original Shelby Cobras)

And there were some Volkswagens too, and VW Karmann Ghias, and Renaults, Peugeots, Citroens, Borgwards, Vauxhalls and such.

But the cars I loved the most were the ones my stepfather built himself, like the Formula III car, Andrea, (named after the owner's daughter), which he designed & built, from the ground up, in the late '50s for Chuck Nerpel, editor of Motor Trend Magazine, and, especially, the 1927 Model T Ford Track Roadster he built for his friend Jack Thompson in the mid-fifties.

I still loved cars in those good old days---before we knew about global warming, and before I could look back upon a half century of the horrific consequences resulting from freeways, urban sprawl, overpopulation, pollution & industrialization---and long before my brilliant stepdad was stricken with mind-erasing Alzheimers.

My dad doesn't know me anymore and he lives in a care facility close to my mom's place in Utah.

For Father's Day, they asked the sons & daughters of the male residents there to send letters and pictures to be shared with the group as they assembled our Dads, and the family & friends who could attend, for a celebration this weekend.

Dad probably didn't understand a word of my letter, or even look at the pictures, but my mom said there wasn't a dry eye among the staff and visitors as the letter was read.

When my stepdad began to lose his faculties, he and I had been good buddies for many years, and I'm very thankful for that because there was a time when we wouldn't even speak to each other.

In my later teens, we had a few very tough years, as sons & fathers often do, and I was a wild one, an angry delinquent from a broken family. So we had a blowout!

Too rebellious to follow rules, I ended up living on the streets for quite some time.

I had nowhere else to go because my real father, a diabetic (and a very talented guy too, by the way), drank himself to death a few years after my mom divorced him.

My stepdad had some rough edges too, and didn't adjust very smoothly to becoming the instant father to four rowdy kids. But we got through those years, and, after I grew up a little, became very close friends again.

We're all human, we all make mistakes, and forgiveness may be the most important ingredient of love.

I've posted my Father's Day Letter* below.

But dad doesn't grasp what the words are about anymore, even though I purposely included many names, places, objects and events that should trigger his memory.

Still, it's Father's Day, and I'd like someone, anyone, to know how I feel about my dad.

Dear Claude,

I’m writing to wish you a very Happy Father’s Day and to say that I love you. I would also like to try and express how much I appreciate the great influence you’ve had on my life.

I am now 61 years old and you’ve been the only father I’ve known for 47 years.

You married my mother, Lois, when I was 14 years old, taking me under your wing and giving me a job at your business, Claude’s Body Shop, in Reseda, California.

In those years you were well-known and respected as one of the finest metal-workers, welders, tool & die makers, and auto-body craftsmen in Southern California.

Working under your example taught me to truly appreciate fine craftsmanship and the value in knowing how to do many things well.

I watched you build Formula III race cars, hot-rods and customs. I witnessed your restoration of many priceless antique classic cars, including that blue 1930s Bugatti T51A, a priceless one of a kind Alpha Bat, and a very rare Facel Vega.

Most, if not all, of the parts for those cars had to be hand-built from scratch and you always managed to do an impossibly beautiful job of it.

You were gifted with an extremely rare native genius, which, combined with your uncommon talents for artistic craftsmanship, innovative invention, and skilled know-how, put you in great demand in each of your fields of expertise.

Your talents seemed easily transferable to any craft you chose to practice. I watched you build gorgeous kitchen cabinets for our house in Van Nuys and remember you taking up many forgotten or difficult arts. You could do absolutely anything that captured your interest, and your interests seemed boundless.

You could hand paint exquisite realistic wood-grain patterns on any surface, a talent which came in quite handy for restoring the metal dashboards of antique cars which were often painted to look exactly like walnut burl or some other rare exotic wood. And I remember you painting a plain household door to look just like knotty-pine.

I remember when you got a centrifuge and took up lost-wax casting, when you found an old forge and set it up in the garage to practice hand-forging, all with superb results. You were also a master machinist, in great demand because of your unmatched skills with milling machines, lathes, and any other machinery you could get your hands on.

All the aspects of your skills and talents had a huge impact on my life. I still strive to be good at many different things, as you were, and, while I don’t have the same set of skills that you did, I'm quite artistic and productive in my own ways, through arts & crafts, photography, graphic design and such. And, to this day, I still do all the construction and repairs to our home, as you always had.

In the 1980s, I built the laundry room onto my house as a result of skills and confidence I learned from you. After I retired I rebuilt my roof to accommodate insulation, replaced all of our windows and doors, and recently installed pine-plank flooring. Now I’m preparing to remodel our kitchen and build the cabinets myself.

I do our own plumbing and remodeling, as you did, rarely hiring outside help, because, like you, I’ve learned that I can usually do a better job of it, and have the rewarding satisfaction of doing the work, being self-reliant, and saving money too.

Back the 1970s, from your example, I restored my old Datsun pick-up to mint condition, even rebuilding the engine myself.

Around that same time I took up stained-glass window making and built a bunch of nice looking windows which still grace several custom homes in Topanga Canyon.

The last window I made, in the late ‘70s, was for you and mom, for the front door of your Granada Hills house, where you saw it every day for decades, and now mom has moved it to the new house there in Elwood, Utah.

As you can see, being witness to your fine craftsmanship and working under your guidance, even for just those few short years, greatly enriched my life.

You showed me how to lay out a hood, or a body panel, and scribe it accurately for punching louvers, and how to properly prepare a car for a show-quality paint job. You taught me how to dis-assemble mangled cars and how to meticulously re-assemble them once the parts were repaired or replaced. You tried to teach me metalworking, welding, and machinist skills, even when I didn't really have an affinity for that stuff. But most importantly, you taught me to use care at every step, and to pay attention to details, and I became very good at that.

And, the fact that you trusted me to work on some of the world's rarest & most valuable cars gave me a great feeling of confidence.

Working at your shop, I developed practical and mechanical skills which have been extremely useful to me throughout my life. The education I got from you has been far more valuable than anything I learned in school, with the exception of the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, most of which mom taught me.

But still, you’ve given me so much more than all that, because you truly became my father.

You often reminded me of how important it was that I learn a trade so I could make a decent living for myself. You instilled in me a work ethic, and the desire to be responsible, which has enabled me to have a home and a family of my own for the past 28 years.

And, like most dads, you taught me how to drive a car, but not just any old car. I learned to drive in a classic red 1958 Triumph TR3 sports-car. And then, just days after I’d gotten my learner's permit, you let me drive that hand-built, now classic hot-rod around the block.

The 1927 Model “T” Ford track roadster you built for Jack Thompson in the '50s was featured on the cover of Hot Rod Magazine in August of 1958 (I sent a copy of the cover with this letter). Then, in the late ‘80s, you were consulted to assist Tri-C Engineering with part of its complete restoration, and today the car is considered one of America’s all-time classic hot-rod roadsters (I’ve enclosed some photos and stories about that too). Last I heard, the roadster was at Petersen’s Classic Car Museum in Los Angeles, but I got to drive it down old Reseda’s Canby Avenue, with you as my passenger, way back in 1961 when I was only 15 years-old. I was so nervous my clutch leg wouldn’t stop shaking. Driving that loud wild looking hot-rod is one of my all-time favorite memories.

You helped me get my first car, a 1953 Studebaker, my second car, a ’56 Chevy, and several years later, you gave me your beloved 1941 Ford pick-up, which had been given to you by your best friend Phil Freudiger (Muroc 200 MPH Club) many years before.

During my early twenties when I was on my own, after those awfully difficult teenage years, you and I became good buddies. So, the late 1960s, ‘70s, & '80s were great times for us. Remember the season’s passes we got to Busch Gardens every year, where we’d get together several times a month, with family and friends, to have an absolute blast?

We went to countless swap-meets and car shows together, to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire a couple of times, and often met for Sunday brunch, or went out to dinner or movies. You came up to Topanga Canyon and partied with my hippie friends when we had our pig or goat roasts. We went to wild counter-culture plays at the Topanga Community House.

Oh, we had such good fun then didn’t we?

I miss those days very much, when we were all so young and alive, and I wish we lived closer to each other so I could visit you more often.

Peggy and I enjoyed seeing you so much when we were there last October. We loved taking you out for that ride to see the new house and visiting with you there for part of the day. The next time we come to Utah we hope to do that again.

I’ve enclosed some pictures with this letter that I thought you might enjoy looking at: my favorite photo of you & mom, dancing in the 1980s; two pictures of your grandkids; some of Peggy & I; and one of me and my life-long friend Charlie. I also sent some photos of your now famous roadster, and a picture of that brass sun-pendant you made for me by the lost-wax casting process.

Thank you dad for all you’ve given me…

I hope you have a very nice Father’s Day.
I wish I was there with you today.
I love you very much!

Your son,

Jim

DAD BUILT THIS 27 'T' ROADSTER IN THE '50s

Click on photo to enlarge - photo credit unknown/owned by Tri-C Engineering

The entire nose of this beautiful track-style roadster, from the firewall forward, was hand-formed from aluminum, as was the full belly-pan. The grille, & grille bezel, were crafted from stainless steel and the matching nerf bar was fabricated from spring steel and then chrome-plated. Dad did all the work himself, before he had his own shop, including an immaculate black lacquer paint job which he sprayed, outdoors, under a giant walnut tree in his dad's front yard.

I think dad was still building aluminum Indie Car bodies for Frank Kurtis at Kurtis Kraft in Glendale when he built the roadster.

The original pin-striping was done by Jimmy Summers. Other details I remember are that the engine is a souped-up bored & stroked '48 Mercury Flathead V-8 with finned aluminum heads, a racing cam, and three Stromberg 97 two-barrel carburetors. The dashboard is engine-turned stainless, crafted by dad, with Stewart Warner gauges, and the tail-lights are '39 Ford teardrops. Custom headers route the dual exhaust pipes through a pair of hand-made surface-mounted stainless bezels, beneath twin nerf bars, on the tail of the modified 'T' bucket. The gloss black paint is contrasted with red Kelsey Hayes wire-wheels, and red leather upholstery

The roadster was completely restored some 15 years ago by Tri-C Engineering with my dad as a consultant. Dad also made some repairs to the aluminum cowl (hood) at the time. The car now looks exactly as it did nearly 50 years ago when it was featured on the cover of Hot Rod Magazine.

This is one of the first cars I ever drove.

But, in the harsh light of 21st Century realities, my love affair with the automobile is long a thing of the past. Still, I'll never forget this little beauty...

...and I'll never forget my stepfather, Claude Hampson.

*The Father's Day Letter above is slightly edited from the original, to correct grammar, smooth out a few sentences, and include a couple of overlooked details. But, it's still 99+% the original letter.

postscript - 6/21/07

There's a substantial amount of research linking aluminum with Alzheimers and I suspect that a lifetime of forming, fabricating, machining, sanding, and welding Aluminum was instrumental in my stepfather acquiring the disease.

Five Things You Don't Know About Me........ A Belated MeMe!

©1970 by Ron Mesaros & Playboy - Click on photo to enlarge

I was tagged for the '5 things meme' awhile back by Claire at the Clairesgarden blog and I've finally obliged.

So, here's 5 things you don't know about me...

1. I bet you didn't know that I once posed topless for Playboy Magazine!

Yup, that's me on the far right, at 24 years old, with a group of Topanga residents who were hired by photographer Ron Mesaros to pose for this photo which illustrated a November 1970 Playboy Magazine article, 'West Of Eden', about Hippie Communes (I believe we were paid 20 or 25 dollars apiece which was good money in those days when you consider I was making $2.50 an hour doing odd jobs here & there).

I had previously participated in a few communes, but this group wasn't part of a commune, we were just hired randomly for the photo.

Playboy actually sold a large-sized wall poster version of this picture, and, even years later, people I didn't know would approach me, out of the blue, to say they had the poster hanging on their wall.

Today, almost 37 years later, there are rainbow colored retro posters being sold on eBay, titled MORNING STAR COMMUNE, which use this same photo cut out in a heart shape. Who woulda' thunk it?

The picture posted above was tweaked in Photoshop to smooth out the halftone color process printing dots.

2. I'll also bet that most of you don't know I was married once before.

Yup, and that's my first wife, Julie (3rd from the right), holding a child that actually belonged to the naked couple in the foreground. Julie and I were together for several years but she ran off with her Karate instructor a few months after we got married. The photo was taken in Topanga Canyon sometime in 1970. The guy on the far left is Bruce, and the girl standing next to me is Gail, but I don't remember the other people's names.

3. Around this same time I was also hired by a fashion designer to dance with a group of Hippie types on Art Linkletter's House Party TV show.

The dancing was a complete disaster and the designer's career probably ended with that show. We were all wearing this person's latest "gypsy styled" creations (I was stylin' in a long-sleeved leather pullover shirt with rawhide lacing & wide-bell-bottom paisley print pants---NICE!!!) and trying to dance in a wild, beat-heavy Hippie groove, to sleepy Lawrence Welk style orchestra music. One of the female models actually cried her way through the whole absurd ordeal. I earned every penny of $100 for this pitiful gig but was too embarrassed to even watch the episode when it aired.

4. My biological father was a diabetic who drank himself to death (at 36 years of age) when I was 15, just a couple of years after he and my mother divorced.

My mother re-married when I was 14 but my stepfather didn't adjust very well to having a house full of rowdy divorcee's kids (4 of us at first, then 5 after his own daughter was born to my mom), so he took to locking us out of the house while they were at work all day. Consequently, during my life as a 'latch-key kid', between the ages of 14 and 18, I pretty much raised myself on the streets, in the company of the other hoodlums from my neighborhood.

5. When I was 17 years old I was arrested for robbing a dry-cleaning shop of $17 and spent 3 months in the old Juvenile Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

The headline in the paper read, "Daring Teenage Bandits Rob Dry Cleaner In Broad Daylight" (there were two of us). The old woman who worked there claimed that we got off with a couple of hundred dollars (she must've had some money hidden that she kept for herself, so we weren't the only crooks taking someone to the cleaners that day). She was also an artist who drew very good likenesses of us for the police, along with a description of our car (which had been parked around the corner on a different street). So, a few weeks later, the police staked out our school and blocked the gate as we were leaving. We were then handcuffed to the fence as school was letting out for all of our friends and classmates to gawk at.

Fortunately for me, after staying out of trouble between then and my 21st birthday, I had my juvenile police record legally expunged, through the courts, or I never would've been able to work for the Post Office.

I consider myself very lucky because, at the time, my life could've continued down the wrong path so easily. But I decided to leave my old neighborhood, and my old gang of hoodlum friends behind, and set out for the 'beatnik' lifestyle of 1964's Greenwich Village in New York City.

There, I discovered more creative ways of getting into trouble, but I managed to stay out of jail long enough to grow up a little bit.

Well, there you have it, 5 things you didn't know about me (and probably didn't want to know) involving my adolescent transition from angry young felon to beatnik-hippie-flowerchild-fashion/photography model. Of course, this was all prior to my glamorous 30 year career as a postman.

~But the picture is from the glory days, when I honestly believed my generation was changing the world in ways that would yield a brighter, more sustainable future. Way back then, I was known around Topanga as "Beautiful Jim", a nickname given to me by a local hair-stylist who admired my thick wavy locks, even though she never got to cut or style them. Much to my chagrin the name stuck to me for years, and even today there's one person, Janet, the model in my 1977 20th Century Crucifixion photo, who still calls me that.

What a long strange trip it's been!

;~)