San Simeon Spring

Flowers begin with aloes and yuccas, then hanging cactus, torch cactus and prickly pear. Palo verde trees are coated yellow from flowers, and mesquite trees and catsclaw acacia trees sprout golden catkins. Sweet acacias have fuzzy round balls for flowers, and the long canes of ocotillo sprout red flames on their tips. Then the tops of the giant saguaros sprout huge buds that open into white and yellow flowers that attract a particular species of bat from Mexico.

The desert can be subtle, but when it flowers, the colors are more outrageous than anything Frida Kahlo stuck in her hair.

Restored Zobor Vineyards - Great Grandfather and the Phylloxera Plague

Me, dad and Uncle Zoltán at the Paulik family
graves in Nitra. Photo taken in 1979.

My great grandparents on my father's side lived in the north of thousand-year-old Hungary, what is now Slovakia. Andor Paulik was my dad's grandfather. (My dad and his brother Zoltán "Hungarianized" the family name to Palotás in 1933.) My dad fled Hungary after the war (the second one) and Uncle Zoltán stayed behind.

My uncle liked ferreting out family records. Among my father's papers is a copy of a Slovak newspaper article from May of 1978. It is about Andor Paulik. My uncle was the source for the article. I know Uncle Zoltán wanted to preserve a bit of history in Upper Hungary (Felvidék or "Upper Region" in Hungarian), so he submitted the information to the newspaper.

As the concluding paragraph indicates, Zoltán also wanted to help preserve the Paulik family grave site where Andor Paulik (1840-1927), his wife Anna Pruzsinszky (1836-1910), and three of their children, Andor (1876-1880), Philmen (1873-1886), and Gyula (1869-1887) were buried.

Here is my translation of the Slovak newspaper article.

RESTORED ZOBOR VINEYARDS

In the second half of the last century, the most dangerous vineyard blight came to us from North America — Phylloxera aphid, which destroyed vineyards not only at home [in Slovakia] but throughout Europe. The city of Nitra was surprised to learn from a circular from the Ministry of Economy that Phylloxera infestation was found in nearby Klosterneuburg in Austria. The circular reached the city hall in Nitra on 21 October 1874. Despite great efforts, within a few years the surrounding vineyards were devastated.

It was a terrible blow for Nitra. Mountain villages Horno-i Dolnozoborska sought help from the Vineyards Commission to attack the problem, but they were helpless. Members of the Commission — K. Riszer, A. Misz, K. Mayer and St. Čačka — recommended the chairman of the Commission, István Bangha, to act for the good.

Some vineyards were neglected and abandoned, while others contemplated the destruction of their own vines in an effort to halt the spread of the infestation. Only a few decided to revive their vineyards by uprooting the vines that had been attacked and replacing them with more vigorous root stocks from America.

Most credit for restoring the vineyards belongs to Andrew Paulik, who in 1882 restored the episcopal vineyards with varieties of Klevner, Vlašsky riesling and Burgundy grapes on American roots. Assistance also came from America in 1886 in the forms of consultant František Szecsi, who had developed excellent table grape varieties, and Sadecky, who had developed new resistant varieties of root stocks that had been launched into mass production in America.

The forestry engineer Andrew Paulik was born the son of a miller in the bishopric county of Nitra on November 29, 1840, in Podvazi, Povazska Bystrica. After completing middle school in Czech Tešíně, he attended the forestry technical school in Sovinci, Bruntal district, and interned at the Bytča estates. After graduating from the forestry school in 1860, he helped to map and measure the Strečnanske estates, then to survey the estates of Likavske Castle, first as an assistant engineer, then as an independent engineer. For nearly 10 years, he managed the forests of Drietom, and then he moved to Nitra where he worked as a forest engineer at the Nitra bishopric until he retired on April 1, 1911. In Nitra, he lived in the first floor of the house at no. 16 Hraclnova Street, but it was mostly a winter house in the courtyard terrace, accessible only from Vazilova Street. Summers he spent in his vineyard in Martinská [Marton] valley. Of his four sons, only one lived to manhood. Two died prematurely and the third was accidently killed at age 18 in a hunting accident near Radošina. Today his grandson, Zoltán Palotás, lives in Budapest.

Andrew Paulik was not only a forestry engineer, but also an excellent grower of fruit trees and wine grapes. He died in Nitra and is buried in a family tomb near the northern wall, not far from the corner of the cemetery.

All who today manage vineyards or appreciate the harvest and the soul of a good Zobor wine should remember the debt we owe to Andrew Paulik. After his death in 1927, his friends and relatives wanted to appreciate his good work by locating [his vineyard] in Martinská Valley, but this plan was ruined by the economic crisis [of the Great Depression]. Today, hardly anybody remembers A. Paulik, so it is important to keep his memory at least in the place of his subdued rest.

Air Miles

I write emails to myself on my Droid as an initial draft of ideas for a post. I do it sitting in my recliner with my morning coffee, as I write now, and I've done it on airplane flights.

I had occasion to fly to Sacramento a week or so ago. Each time I fly I get an urge to jot down all the flights I have taken. Maybe staring at the fold-up table embedded in the back of the seat in front of you brings up associations with all the other seat-back tables I have stared at over decades. My flights go back to about 1965 when as a kid, I flew alone on a Ansett-ANA airlines DC-3 between Sydney and Brisbane, and returned on a then ultra-modern Boeing 727. On this my most recent flight, to pass the airborne time between Tucson and Las Vegas, I jotted down a list of airline flights in an email to myself.

The numbers get staggering, both in terms of take-offs and landings, travel time, and distance. Not counting a couple of times my brother Paul took me up in single engine planes, or the one time I went soaring in a glider, or the distances traveled circling around airports on account of weather or waiting for a parking place, I reckon I have been on over two hundred flights for a cumulative distance (as the crow flies) of over fourteen times around the earth's circumference. That works out to 450,000 miles.

The most quaint flights? Clearly on a tail-wheeled DC-3 with wings in flight oscillating all too freely. I had the pleasure of flying in a DC-3 thrice, the second being from Auckland to Wellington in 1966 (Air New Zealand) and the third from Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido in 1982 (Lineas Aereas Oaxaqueñas).

The first time the passengers broke into spontaneous applause upon a landing? Manaus. The flight crews of domestic airlines in Brazil delighted in repeating in-flight announcements in multiple languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and German. That is, until the flight from Rio hit wicked thunderstorms around the mid-Amazon city of Manaus. Then the announcements about a delayed landing, having to circle, and alternate airfields in case of fuel issues came only in Portuguese. It was a long and anxious time rocking about in black clouds looking out the windows and seeing lightning flashes in the sky and nothing but dense jungle below. When the plane finally approached the landing strip, hit ground (it was a rough landing), and settled down, the passengers clapped in relief.

Lots and lots of people have flown much, much more than I have, whether for work or pleasure, so I am not claiming any great achievement. Still, countless lives have been spent in the narrow confines of medieval villages or within a radius of a few blocks in Brooklyn. True, humans accumulated huge distances of travel over the course of lives as hunter-gatherers, seasonal nomads, caravan traders across Asia, seamen sailing the oceans, and flight crews at work and their dependents flying stand-by for free. But I am a regular, only moderately adventuresome person with a sedentary job.

To have traveled by air over fourteen times around the world says a lot about modern times and how small this planet has become. I am just not quite sure what it says, given human inability to understand its own varied cultures or refrain from spoiling its planet, but it surely says something.