My solution: mindful meditation. Pay attention to your breaths until the negative feelings pass.
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Playing Havoc With the Weather
An Old Relief Map of Southern California
I remember from my early days in Cleveland, whatever happened to one side of the city also happened to the other sides. That’s because Cleveland was, if not as flat as a pancake, pretty darn flat. In fact the highest elevation in the whole State of Ohio is 1,549 feet (472 meters).
Compare that with Los Angeles County where I live. When I look out my front door, I can see the Santa Monica Mountains just a few miles north of me, where the highest elevation is 3,111 feet (948 meters) at the curiously named Sandstone Peak. Curiously named because it actually isn’t sandstone. And there is one peak in the San Gabriel Mountains—Mount San Antonio, aka Mount Baldy—which rises to 10,064 feet (3,069 meters).
When the news gives the regional weather report, it has to differentiate between several different weather zones:
- Coastal (where I live)
- Los Angeles basin
- Valleys (San Fernando and San Gabriel)
- Mountains
- “Inland Empire” (San Bernardino and Riverside)
- Lower desert
- Upper desert
If the forecasters warn of an upcoming rainstorm, we in the coastal region might see only a few stray drops, while the San Gabriel Mountains might have a foot of snow dumped on their peaks.
So any “all-purpose” one-line weather forecast for Los Angeles is pretty meaningless. Los Angeles County is pretty big—4,084 square miles or 12,310 square kilometers, exceeded in area by only eight States. So if you’re flying into LAX from the East, you might want to check out Weather.Com or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website—provided that the Musk-Rat doesn’t gut it.
Activities
Simply put: Books, Old Movies, Cooking, and (when I could afford it) Travel.
Two Auto Museums Bite the Dust
Martine Sitting in a Classic Corvette
I was dismayed to find that two superb auto museums closed down in 2024. In both cases, the museums grew out of personal car collections. When the museum founders passed on to that garage in the sky, both museums started to run into hard times.
The first was the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard with its Bugattis and Art Deco paintings and furniture which closed in February 2024.
Hitting closer to home was the closure in October of the Zimmerman Automobile Driving Museum in El Segundo. There was a time when we visited the museum every few weeks. Martine loved it because they concentrated on American cars and because they allowed visitors to sit behind the wheel. She was particularly fond of a classic Corvette illustrated above.
There is an excellent article in Hemmings.Com about the Zimmerman Museum’s frantic attempts to raise cash after Stanley Zimmerman died in 2020. The article contains some excellent photos of the museum’s holdings.
Museums based on private collections have a high mortality rate. They are like restaurants, which, especially after the Covid-19 lockdown, are dropping like flies.
Superstitious
For some reason, I generally dislike coming back the same way I arrived at my destination. I wonder if I will feel tugged to do that when Martine and I go on a road trip to Tucson next month.
Century
What, you made it after all! Who would’ve guessed it? Certainly not me.
Daily writing prompt
What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
My middle name is Alex, which is my father’s first name. Originally, because he was born in what is now Slovakia, it was Elek. In the U.S., he was Alex James Paris. I am James Alex Paris.
The Other Richard Burton
If I could be someone else for a day, I would pick Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) who lived a super-adventurous life and at the same time was a superb scholar.
Daily writing prompt
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
Unfortunately, both of my parents were deceased before they got to be my present age.
Send Us Rain, But Not Too Much!
Finally Some Rain to Put Down the Wildfires
Just within the last half hour it has started to rain. It has provoked some strange news stories in which the hope is expressed that there won’t be too much. Yes, if there is “too much” rain, there will be mudslides. But then it is all part of the cycle of wind, wildfires, mudslides, and earthquakes that has formed (and will continue to form) the Southern California landscape.
I’m just happy that the air will be more breathable and that the increased humidity will relieve us from painful peeling hangnails. If there are mudslides, that will just be part of the cost we will have to bear for living in this strange and beautiful place.
The rains are expected to last for the next couple of days.
Tarnmoor 
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