Author Archives: Kyle Kimberlin

Abby Sunderland’s family follies

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Abby Sunderland, the very young sailor recently rescued adrift in the Indian Ocean, seems appalled by criticism of her family for allowing her to make the solo trip around the world.

“Any sailor that goes out to the water knows that being hit by a rogue wave is a risk, no matter where you are,” she said.

“You can’t eliminate risk, you can do a lot to minimize it but it’s always there.”

I suppose the same could be said for criticism, the entirely predictable result of any end to Abby’s adventure, except unmitigated triumph.

The Sunderland family has evidently done little to minimize criticism. If it bothers them so much to be criticized, they might have taken some steps. But it seems it has hit them broadside, completely unawares.
I’m surprised that criticism is even on their radar, and that they’re choosing to see it as such a threat.

Of course Abby Sunderland is brave, remarkable, and a person of admirable spirit. But her boat is gone, and she had to be rescued many days from the nearest port. The thing speaks for itself. And who speaks for the lost and abandoned boat? It’s an inanimate object, right. But is anyone going to ask Abby if she feels guilty letting Wild Eyes slip away into oblivion?

Maybe we should ask Wilson…

Personally, I think anyone who sets sail across the Indian Ocean alone in a sailboat smaller than my condo is careless and foolish. I would think that even if Abby had been out there with her sailing instructor dad. It doesn’t matter if you have 30 years experience. Because you can encounter calamity anywhere, and it’s wise to do it within reach of a Coast Guard cutter, if not in sight of land.

I’ve been driving for over 30 years, but I would not set out across a roadless desert by myself, even with the best equipment and preparation. It’s simply unwise. And the sun rises and sets just as beautifully off the coast of California as it does a thousand miles from Madagascar.

It’s good to have dreams, but some people seem bent on pushing the living of their dreams beyond the horizons of absurdity.


Boycott BP?

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Suicide is called another casualty of BP oil spill

An Alabama charter boat captain kills himself after he was forced to do something he hated: working for BP on the cleanup. Now, a close-knit community worries there may be others suffering silently. [Link]

Every day, I drive past a BP gas station – called ARCO here – on my way to and from my home. And I wonder at the fact that there are still cars at the pumps there. And people inside the AMPM MiniMart, buying Doritos and beef jerky, and Cokes and other crap. I say to myself, boy I'd have to be pretty damn low on gas – desperately so – to pull my pickup into that place.

Maybe I'm wrong, and we shouldn't be driving past the BP, staging a boycott, exerting the power of our debit cards over the evil indifference of global corporate greed. After all, there are local people working in there, and it seems shallow and vindictive to make them pay for our collective outrage.

Fine. I could accept that point of view, if at least I sensed any collective outrage at all. Where is it? Are the American people even mildly annoyed with this company?

It seems like we are all so hypnotized by the rhetoric that "we need oil," and the fact that we're all driving around using it, that we feel complicit with BP in its greed and destruction. I was driving my gas-burning vehicle when I encountered this train of thought, so perhaps that was a bad moment to get self-righteous.

Baloney. People eat meat too. That doesn't mean we're all accomplices if McDonald's starts grinding up people along with the cows. Though we are guilty if we're eating the cows they're grinding up now. But that's another blog post.

Another analogy lies in the fact we pay taxes for a national defense. That doesn't prove we concur with the myopic and misbegotten judgments of an assclown president, who decides to launch shock and awe and perpetual war against countries who pose no clear and present danger to US.

The reality is that I never stop at that ARCO anyway, unless I'm seriously on fumes and in a rush at the moment I'm passing it. I never did like that place, because they play annoying commercials from overhead speakers, and the pay stations don't work half the time. And if you go inside to pay, you're met with a cashier who seems to have been stunned by a blow to the head.

The head of BP met with our Congress and president Obama, then went yachting. Aside from the irony that he sailed in waters not seething with poison, it's obvious he and his company aren't getting the message: You don't get to devastate a large and beautiful, vital part of America, destroy people's lives, leave communities and families lost in your wake, and just go on doing business as usual.

So even if that had been my favorite place to buy my fuel before, I wouldn't set my Goodyears on it now. No way. I'm boycotting British Petroleum until they clean up the mess and grow a conscience. Both of which are certain to take a very long time.

old and in my face

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I’ve been subscribed for about a year to a newsletter about computer stuff, from a website called PC Pitstop. Today I unsubscribed, and I think it’s worth taking a moment to note why.

In this week’s newsletter email, I was reading this column by one Leo Notenboom, “Are Free Email Services Worth It?”

“Summary: Free email services and accounts are convenient and ubiquitous. But free email services aren’t the right place to keep your important information.”

He gives us these reasons not to trust free email services: Spam, Deliverability, (lack of ) Customer Service, and Limits and Restrictions.

As I read the column, I first thought, Gee, maybe I should rely more heavily on my Cox.net email address. Then I began to think Oh codswallop, none of these complaints is really valid. Maybe several years ago…. And there’s the rub.

I reached the end of the piece, and read, “Google’s GMail service is not yet released – it’s in beta – so it remains to be seen exactly how reliable or problematic it turns out to be. As you can imagine, I’m somewhat skeptical, and expect that it will fall into the same traps as Yahoo and Hotmail.” 

Gmail has been out of Beta (that’s when software is released so that users can sort of help finish it) for a long time. So I began thrashing around in search of a publication date for what I was reading. At the bottom, in smaller print: November 8, 2004.

Wow. PC Pistop apparently thought it would be a good idea to send out a newsletter with a 5 year old article in it. If the dude had written it in November 2009, it would still be too old to be relevant. Technology news is like scrambled eggs. Cook ’em up and serve ’em quick, because that stuff doesn’t keep.

Which makes me wonder how much of the rest of PC Pitstop’s content is old and grungy. How much of their newsletter is just old filler? If it’s not fresh, I don’t want it. And  here at Metaphor, I don’t cotton to folks phonin’ it in.

For the record, I’ve been using free web-based email programs for several years, and I don’t have any of the complaints that Leo had; not even 5 years ago. In my experience, free email programs work just fine. My main complaint with all of them except gmail is their hideous, vulgar advertising in the middle of the user interface. Especially Yahoo – it’s the worst.

That’s just part of the ad running in my Yahoo inbox today. I don’t use Yahoo anymore. But look at that crap: What does that slack-smiling moron have to do with mortgage refinance? What does the constipated grandpa have to say about moms in continuing ed? Nothing. These are random-generated spam ads. I’ll bet their really phishing sites for spammers or malware. And Yahoo is serving them up to their users. There oughta be a law.

Notenboom’s bottom line seems to be if you have important stuff (who doesn’t?), don’t trust it to a free service.

“In short, I would never recommend a free email service for anything that you consider important, or anything that you want to keep long term.”
Here’s how to judge: if the email account went away completely tomorrow, along with all the mail and contact information it contains, would it be an inconvenience or a catastrophe? If the later, then you need to get away from your free account. Now.

He never explains why a free email service is – or was, in 2004 – more likely to dump all your Precious into bleak oblivion. But the essential difference between free webmail and email provided by your Internet Service Provider (Cox, Verizon, etc.) is that free email remains on their server after you read it. You store it there, and continue to access it from any computer. If you use a program such as Outlook to download your email, you’re responsible for saving it on your hard drive. And you need to be at that computer to search through old mail. Now tell me, which is more likely, that Google’s or Yahoo’s professionally maintained, backed-up servers will lose all my old emails, or that I will — meaning that my home computer will?

My free webmail accounts have handled many tens of thosands of messages, without ever losing a single thing. They do everything I need them to do. In fact, gmail is constantly being improved. You can’t say that about any desktop email client, such as Outlook. And who needs customer service for email? That’s like calling tech support for help opening a book. 

 

much rejoicing

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Well it’s been a grateful week in Carpinteria, my small home town on the California coast.

My last post was on Tuesday, June 8, election day here in California. Posted as I sat waiting for the first returns, as I recall. And if you’ve been following this blog at all, you know that I was adamantly opposed to a certain Measure J. By this, an oil company from Denver tried to bypass the City government and get the voters to permit expanded oil exploration here. I mean right here, within the city limits, near my home and close to hundreds of other homes as well.

The centerpiece of the company’s plan – known as the Paredon Project – was to be a massive drilling rig, 140 to 175 feet tall. It would be on our ocean bluffs, adjacent to a residential tract, the bluffs nature preserve, and the seal rookery. We’re talking about a federally protected wildlife sanctuary, folks.

the drill rig

Happily, Measure J went down in a thunderous landslide of Oh Hell No. 70% of the voters didn’t fall for it at all. 

Election Blowout 4

And there was much rejoicing. There was a very large exhale of relief.

It’s a long and tawdry story, most of which I would rather see you spared. Suffice to say the magnificent defeat of Measure J comes not just as a welcome result, but a rightful vindication. The vast majority of us stuck together. We remembered the natural beauty that makes Carpinteria the place where we want to live in the first place. Our little town is not for sale.

We still have a stable local government. No shots were fired. Democracy abides.

As for the folks who voted the other way … well, we still love you. Take a walk on the bluffs sometime. Remember that all who wander are not lost, and all that glitters is not gold.

Signal Fires

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The rain is mingling with light from the streetlamp
and light from my window
and soaking
into the long animal grass.

I know you cannot see these lights.
I have put ten miles between us
and the creeks, trees and hills.
An entire world of separation.

What will become of me?
The night is useless,
cold, and you are somewhere in the dark,
in Santa Barbara, dreaming.

The moon was rising out of Ojai
when I left you and drove home.
All the birds
in El Estero were asleep.

The moon is shining on the Channel now,
and maybe shining on Fort Ross,
the Russian cupolas and crosses
flashing signals from the cliffs.

A far and lonely place
where the road
makes love to gravity, clinging high
above the rocks and pounding surf.

My heart is dizzy like that road tonight.
Narrow, slick and dangerous.
I think of you
then watch the sky until my breath returns.

I walk the dog over the tracks
and down to the bluffs, into a shroud
of eucalyptus trees that watch
the sea in anguish as it rises and falls.

The sea does not care about me.
I love you but the sea does not care.
I need you but the sea is just rising and falling,
so I will light a fire on the edge, and wait.


Inspired by Carpinteria, the coast of
California, a little dog, and a girl.

Creative Commons License
Signal Fires by J. Kyle Kimberlin is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

coverage

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This great rally throughout downtown Carpinteria last Friday…

was covered on Noozhawk.com and in the Santa Barbara Independent.

I’ll be downtown with my sign this afternoon, and if you’re local I hope to see you.

Since the election is tomorrow, there won’t be many more posts on this topic. I hope. I may take some photos today and post them, but I don’t have much more to say. Except Vote No on Measure J.

Don’t just agree No on Measure J, and forget to vote.

Don’t let complacency creep in, because it’s not over ’til it’s over. And as obvious as it may seem that we shouldn’t vote our own City government out of power – and hand the whole process over to an oil company – if we won’t beat this power grab – we could have a mess to clean up.

Yep, that was a seagull.

did you say wheat?

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I was vacuuming the living room today and thinking about oil. We all need oil. We also need bread.

Sure, but that doesn’t mean that one should turn his front yard into a wheat field. The neighbors might object. And the wheat in a guy’s front yard does nothing to satisfy the national hunger, just his own.

There is a place for growing wheat, called a wheat field. And there’s a place for pumping oil, called an oil field. And neither one belongs in a residential area. Which is what Venoco is trying to do in Carpinteria: expand oil operations in an area surrounded by homes and fragile ecosystems.

If someone tries to do something really ugly or destructive, a threat to quiet enjoyment, health and safety, there are government authorities to whom we can complain. Unless of course, the wheat farmer pulls off a power grab and tricks the people into voting said authorities into oblivion.  

I wonder if anyone has ever done that, planted wheat on their yard, in a suburban neighborhood. Well, of course. 



And if it is against the law, there’s always a way around that. Right? You just feed some of your neighbors a cock and bull story about the vast royalties they’ll get from your harvest. Tell them America needs wheat so we’re not dependent on foreign imports. Imply that your little front yard crop is actually relevant to that independence. Then they’ll vote to let you grow it to your heart’s content. Even if their own homes and lives are affected in the process.

Now you’re in the ranching business too.

“Wheat. I’m dead, they’re talkin’ about wheat. The question is, have I learned anything about life?”
— Woody Allen, Love and Death … great ending scene … watch it here.

That’s funny stuff, right there. But I digress. The problem here in Carpinteria is that part of the flock have bought the premise that since we need oil, America needs the tiny puddle under our town. That’s wrong. America has vast tracts of oil that aren’t even being pumped, and that’s Big Oil’s decision. 

You see, America has very little oil. Our vast tracts can never meet our needs. Most of the world’s oil is in the middle east, especially Iraq. Plus a lot is in Russia and Canada. But Iraq is #1, which is why we went to war there. But that’s another blog post. Actually, I’ve been posting against the war since February 2003, just not on Metaphor. 

Here’s some info on oil reserves, from Wikipedia:


The foreign oil is easier to get at, and there’s a whole lot more of it overseas. Better profits yonder, is my point. But the little puddle under Carpinteria has nothing to do with all that.

The oil under our town can’t possibly make a difference to America. If they pumped it all out and turned it into gasoline, the US would burn through it before breakfast. Which doesn’t mean Venoco can’t sell it. They can try to get it, and if they succeed, they’ll make a profit, if they can get it out cheaply. Hence the big oil rig. 

And Venoco doesn’t care about the effects on the neighborhood. They don’t care what assaults our eyes, ears or noses. They won’t give it a thought if our town becomes less enjoyable, desirable or safe. 

Venoco Well Blowout, Orland CA. 4/23/2010

But Measure J isn’t about wheat and it’s not really about oil. Not on Tuesday, anyway. It’s about power. Whether the people have it, or give it to the oil company. That’s a trick, if you can get people to do it, against their own interests. It’s called a power grab.

This story is about one town, one oil company. People have made themselves a home here. It’s nice, and they have the right to keep it that way. … The rest of the story is all just natural gas.