A few quotes from the estimable, if presidentially inept, H. Ross Perot, who famously brought us the Giant Sucking Sound.

Something in human nature causes us to start slacking off at our moment of greatest accomplishment. As you become successful, you will need a great deal of self-discipline not to lose your sense of balance, humility, and commitment.

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.

If you see a snake, just kill it – don’t appoint a committee on snakes.

The death toll is up to 10 in La Conchita now. I feel so bad for that guy who lost his wife and 3 children. Thank God he has a daughter who wasn’t home when it happened. His heart must be broken forever.

The death toll in the La Conchita mudslide has risen to six. A friend of a friend of my Dad’s is among the dead. The rain has stopped. The radar is clear, the stars are out. It’s cold. Tomorrow, the forecast is sunny.

You can’t get here from anywhere else. If you do, the motels are probably all full. The freeways are closed, the back roads are washed out or washed over.

You know the old cliche b-movie line, “I’m afraid no one can leave tonight. The bridge is washed out.” Well, the bridge really is washed out. About a mile from my house, there was a cool little 1927 bridge of green steel, over a trickle of a stream. Really, just a drainage ditch. The bridge looks like somebody very large smashed it with a ballpean hammer. And in betrayal of the implication of that movie line – that the bridge would be fixed the next day – it will be months before it’s replaced.

Typically me, I wonder how bare the shelves are getting at the Vons. And how the heck did the mail get through?

I’m sorry for the six lives lost, and the broken hearts that reality leaves in its wake. I’m afraid that number will get bigger, before this deal goes down.

It’s raining again, here in Carpinteria, where I live. It’s raining pretty hard. I’m listening to the water drumming down the rain gutters of my building. The dog is sleeping on the floor, behind me. It’s warm and dry in my study. I’m thinking about the people down in La Conchita. Rescuers are still digging for survivors. People who live there are either grieving or worrying.

As you can see, it’s not very far from where I am right now, and the site of this terrible event.

click to enlarge

Yesterday, driving home from Ventura, I looked at the scar on the hillside above La Conchita; the scar left from a landslide 10 years ago. I thought the hillside looked swollen, ominous. I want you to look at this photo of La Conchita.

You won’t see anything like that on CNN. That’s not from the slide that happened today. That’s a USGS photo of the slide that happened in 1995. See that big lump of earth in the middle of that gouge in the bluff? That stuff that looks like it’s sliding? That’s what slid in 95, and it’s been sitting there just that way until today, when it finished going down. There were four or five houses under the bottom of that slide. Now there are about a dozen more. And people.

This is a painful thing for our community. I feel just awful for those involved. La Conchita – the little shell – is such a small, quiet place – just homes and a gas station. They don’t have a supermarket or anything, so I know the people there come into Carpinteria a lot. So I guess I’ve sort of thought of it as a little brother to Carpinteria, as we are to Santa Barbara. I wish there was something I could do.

Here’s a site with lots of photos from La Conchita today. The link to them is in the center column.

I have the greatest respect for teachers. It’s a vital and noble profession. As employees of the public, they deserve job security. After they have served well, they should get it. And so should the lady who works in the school office, and the cooks in the cafeteria, and the bus drivers and the janitors.

While we’re at it, the private sector should make job security a priority too. I’m sick of the attitude in this so-called culture that makes people an expendable corporate asset.

The story I was writing, for which I blew off blogging a couple of nights, is finished. The title I settled on is Dream For No Reason At All. I was going to post it here, because it’s very short. Most of my stories are. But I think I’m going to try something different with this: not posting it.

I’m going to very carefully not post it, and see if that causes any sort of shift in the universe. If I could see the stars tonight, I could go out and watch after I don’t post it, and see if one of them maybe turns blue. Imagine that. But my sense is that absolutely nothing will be different.

If you want to read it, let me know. Because doggone it, life forms in the world are supposed to interact. No man is an island. The bell tolls for thee. Let profligate biology rise up and wave a misbegotten paw in the shril dialectic exhaust. Or something.

Mean time, here’s a little piece:

There is something he needs, must have. Something. Down there, where the night, blown black with rain and dripping darkness, disappears. He moves on. Can’t imagine what it could be. Must have it, though, and moves down the street, catching glimpses through the ash covered windows, of broken furniture caked in dust.

All you cat lovers out there gotta check out this amazing kitten video.

I found this at busymom.net.

I just sent this to Senator Boxer. Here’s a link to the news about this.

Dear Senator Boxer:

Thank you for joining Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones in her objection to the electoral votes of her state. It means a great deal to me as a citizen that so many voters of Ohio have felt disenfranchised by the nefarious process of this election. And I am proud as a Californian that it is a senator of my state that joins in this rightful and honorable dissent. Thank you!

So I haven’t been writing much on the blog in the last few days. Guess I don’t have much to say right now. Sorry. I guess I’m assimilating, and hunkered down in the rain. We’re having a very wet winter here in the Santa Barbara area.

I like the rain. Don’t mind getting a little damp. It’s refreshing, and God knows we need the water. Our lakes and reservoirs were getting very low. I live in a top floor condo on a hill. I have a new roof. No need for concern about flooding or leaking. I can relax and enjoy the weather we’ll remember longingly this summer.

I used to live in a much different place, a guest house in a low area near the freeway. The neighbor’s land was higher. Of course, just some normal rain would soak in and drain away. But if we had heavy storms for a few days, then all the rain that fell on his lot drained to the back, and headed under the fence and right for my living room. It was a sunken living room, and the mud seal in the foundation was bad. In the 13 years I lived there, I think the place flooded about five times. There is nothing quite like getting up in the middle of the night of heavy rain and stepping barefoot into a carpet saturated with muddy water.

Eventually, the landlady spent a fortune on repairs and drainage, then sold the property. That was probably wise. And it gave me the nudge to get out. I’m warm and dry tonight, comfortable, and if forced to admit it, I’m not unhappy thank you.

I’m going to put a pin in this, for you to think about, and come back to it later:

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

-Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

I’ve been trying to write tonight. Had an idea for a rather strange short story – the opening, anyway. Also, I’ve been photoshopping old family photos — my time machine. So in my absence, here’s something to ponder:

The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine.

— Plato, ‘Phaedrus.’

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it,you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

-J.D. Salinger,writer (1919- )