Saint Simon

It's only a coincidence, but then, so many coincidences are intriguing.

We live on San Simeon Drive. It's named after a San Simeon Ranch that used to be in this area. The Spanish had a nice custom of naming things after saints. In this case, the namesake is Saint Simeon the Stylite, a Fourth Century ascetic saint who achieved notability for living 37 years on a small platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo in what is today's modern Syria.

Since we ditched the idea of dish/cable television, Shari and I converted to the internet. We already had subscribed to Netflix and Prime. We exchanged DirectTV for a subscription to Britbox.

Much of the time we simply watch YouTube. It's amazing what you can find on YouTube — intelligent documentaries, house buying in the British and French countryside, travel programs, early music concerts, old movies and television shows. We've watched all the Sherlock Holmes movies with Basil Rathbone and many of the Sherlock Holmes television programs with Ronald Howard.

I remember watching television as a kid in Australia. By golly, the original Aeroplane Jelly commercial is on YouTube. Just search for it. The 1950's Robin Hood series starring Richard Greene is there, as is Jet Jackson — but neither has aged that well.

One day I searched "The Saint". Shari vaguely remembered the TV show. I have specific memories watching the program in Sydney on the family boob tube — in glorious black & white. Which it is.

We have been watching an episode of The Saint in the evenings ever since. It's a bit of a dinner routine. Many episodes of the first season are uploaded to YouTube, plus a few programs from later seasons, including color from seasons five and six.

We ran out of The Saint episodes that we hadn't seen. Although many of the 114 episodes (six seasons, 1962 to 1969, go figure) are on YouTube, only about a dozen are watchable. Most are in a strange, unwatchable format posted, no doubt, by the copyright owner: a frustratingly small screen set within a distracting background screen.

Frustrated, I searched online for DVD's.  They exist. The entire The Saint series on 33 (thirty-three) DVD's. Prices from $44 to $150. We went with $44 via eBay. No problem. Less than a week later, I ripped all 114 episodes and loaded them onto my external hard drive.

We dial up an episode at whim on our big screen TV through our Roku USB input.

I have to be honest. I never liked Roger Moore in his later role as James Bond. He always seemed out of shape.

When I first searched for The Saint on YouTube, I was curious why we liked the show so much in Australia. Well, Roger Moore as Simon Templar is dashing and debonair, lithe and svelte. No question. His expressions are timeless; the stories are always light, entertaining, and have a good ending.

Each show begins with Simon's introductory monologue to the camera, then someone recognizes him by name. Camera re-frames on Simon to leave space above his head where a halo suddenly appears. Simon looks up, as if at his own halo, and smiles. Theme music plays. The episode is introduced.

Although almost all episodes were shot in English studios, camera crews took establishment footage from all over the world to create a masterful illusion of international intrigues in London, Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Costa Brava, Cannes (of course), Canada, Bahamas, New York, Athens and Cornwall. It's fun just to see vintage 1960's cars, trucks and buses on the roads.

Simon Templar is a gentleman who doesn't back off from a fistfight, and who is never taken in by a beautiful woman.

Simon drives his Volvo sports car (license plate ST-1), plays opposite beautiful women and cunning men, has an obligatory fist fight or two in each episode (much more convincingly playful than Roger as Bond), and, against all odds, mischievously solves the problem of the day in a very honorable, gentlemanly, and unexpected manner — nay, even saintly.

So here at San Simeon, we have become enamored of The Saint Simon Templar. We also like living on a small dead-end street named after Saint Simeon the Stylite.

Coincidence?

Chipmunks, Dirt Piles & Rocks

The front of our San Simeon house is the pretty much the first domestic place you see driving in. It has a rock slope below the house, an area I call the Cirque. The rock is Catalina granite boulders and rocks — pale somewhat soft, with quartz veins and sparkling mica.

Granite isn't granite without mica and quartz.

I like Catalina rock. It's local. It's where we are situated, and what naturally exists in our washes and Foothills. It's subtle and pretty. At least it was until the pack rat, tiny white mice, and cute, abrubt-speedy chipmunks moved in.

First was the pack rat hoarded debris. Swept some up then spooned dry concrete into the cavities. Hosed it down. Looks solid. Mostly islands of Catalina rock poking out from grey cement treacle.

We have had lots of rodent activity this summer. We hired a pest control service ...
but that's another story.

Concreting that slope made sense. The scupper that drained about a quarter of the roof splashed and poured down that same part of the slope. The flow of erosion had already washed some dirt away and made the rocks collapse inwards some. That area needed the concrete.

Then I noticed increased chipmunk activity. Fresh green gouges had been chewed out of my prized hanging cactus and torch cactus.

The other clue was big dirt piles on my Catalina rock slope, like ugly mining tailings of which there are already way too many in the Copper State.

The clincher was seeing chipmunks hanging around on that rock slope, then disappearing in small holes above the dirt tailings.

Casus belli. It meant war.

It was war.

My weapons were cement blocks, stucco, gravel, 60 lb. bags of pre-mix concrete, chicken coop wire, wheelbarrows full of dirt, and my hard earned experience with the various burrowing reptiles and mammals we have here in the Sonoran Desert.

And stripping the heavy rocks off, then strategically stacking them back up.

The slope is beginning to take the shape of two terraces, which means two solid surfaces on which the traverse the slope and attend to pruning.

I still have a couple of days work left. Hopefully, what I am doing will hold them there varmints.

Smoke in the House

Water heater burn-out.

It happened once before, an unusually acrid smell and smoke wafting out the door that leads to our small, centrally located utility room; the one that holds the heat exchange system, water heater, alarm system, door bell, vacuum cleaner, and IKEA shelves holding boxes and piles of shoes, boots, winter hats, sewing machine and notions, light bulbs, extension cords, spare cushions, fabric ….

Just outside the door to the utility room is the security system smoke alarm. It makes a phone call to a light bulb in Central Alarm headquarters and someone there calls the house (Are you okay? What is your security code?), or the person calls the fire department and they also call us, or all of them call us.

The alarm went off. We ran towards the noise and immediately noticed the smoke coming out from the utility room. We ventured inside fearful of flames. There was just acrid smoke coming from an electronic control box of the heat exchange system. The unit was fried.

A heat exchange system has two parts. A large unit inside and another large unit outside and plumbing in between that circulates a heat-cold retaining fluid. If it runs one way, it takes heat out of the house. If it runs the other way, it brings heat into the house. It was an old system that probably dated back to when the house was built, 1978.

We replaced the entire system. We even paid for the rental of a crane to hoist the outdoor unit over the concrete block wall that serves as its enclosure. The gate was too narrow.

In the nine some years since, we have enjoyed our new system. It is much quieter than the old. It's still pretty noisy, but that old system, each time it turned on, made an exploding noise like someone hit the metal ducts with a sledge hammer.

Friday a week ago: déjà vu. Acrid smoke smelling like burnt rubber poured out from the utility room. Disturbingly enough it did not trigger any smoke alarm. Fortunately, it was early morning when Shari and I are most active. Shari noticed it and grabbed me as I returned from walking Nazar the Wonder Dog. We were frantic. The water heater was smoking.

I rushed outside to the circuit breaker box, realized I needed reading glasses to decipher the electrician's handwritten labels, rushed back, couldn't identify the water heater circuit, and started guessing. I never did find it, but the smoke did stop. The stench lingered for days, but it stopped smoking.

I unscrewed the panels that cover the two heating elements, the one above with sensors and controls and the one below. It was the one above. It fried. The tank itself had failed. Probably the slight alkalinity of our Tucson water had eaten through the sheet metal and water had leaked into the surrounding insulating layer and filled it up all the way to the control box electronics which shorted and smoked and fizzled until it fried itself out. (And, thank God, tripped the circuit breaker. I just hadn't noticed.)

The good news was that July means summer in the Old Pueblo. This time of year, cold tap water isn't. It's quite tepid. So cold water showers are actually quite pleasant and refreshing.

The water heater replacement took place four days later. It took Jeff and Tracy six hours.

See, we have a solar panel on the roof that heats another circulating, heat absorbing fluid that is piped down into the utility room through a heat-exchange manifold that heats water circulating out from the water heater tank. When the sun is out, the water heater doesn't need to fire its electric heating elements. The solar system takes over.

A Borg. "Resistance is futile."

New water heater. "Vacation mode is futile."

What the solar-assist system means from an installation perspective is a lot of copper tubing. Our water heater doesn't look just like a water heater. It looks like a water heater that has been absorbed into the Borg collective. It has copper pipes all over the top — water out and back into the tank, gel from and back to the solar panel on the roof — the copper-clad heat exchange manifold itself, and the small pump and control panel that governs the solar gel circulation.

We kept the front door open so Jeff and Tracy could do their work and gather tools more easily. The indoor thermometer read ninety degrees.

They fabricated new copper piping to replace the old. The soldering produced enough smoke to trigger the smoke alarm. We got calls from both the fire department and Central Alarm. Well, at least we knew the alarm system worked.

After six hours of installation, Jeff showed us how the touch screen worked on the solar control box. To put it in vacation mode, tap up here, see the icon appear there, then tap down there three times (I kid you not) and the vacation mode icon appears here and you touch there to confirm. To turn off vacation mode, you do the same in reverse. His fingers seemingly raced over the panel like a teenager's two thumbs texting on a smart phone. After six hours of increasing owners' heat exhaustion, we didn't really need to know vacation mode.

We were more interested at looking at Tracy's and Jeff's smart phones. While Jeff was writing up the bill, Shari showed Tracy her paintings in the living room.  Turned out Tracy was an artist by training and avocation and a plumber only by necessity. He pulled out his smart phone. Turned out Jeff also painted. He pulled out his smart phone. Both showed us photos of their paintings. They were not only good, their styles were very original.

Боже мой! (bozhe moi) Oh my God!

Fire in the Catalinas

Mother Nature has her moods.

Lightning strikes started the fire on Friday,
June 5, on the west side of the Santa Catalina Mountains. It jumped over the ridge and into Pima Canyon on Monday. Last night, Wednesday night, Finger Rock was on fire. Ribbons of fire burned eastwards. By morning, smoke obscured the mountains and drifted down the washes past our house and into the city.

The local newspaper reports that this fire, together with a fire in Alaska, are the highest priority for fire-fighters nation-wide. Bighorn was only 10% contained on Thursday night. Warnings are being issued for some evacuations.

All video taken from our backyard. The updated video (as of Friday morning) shows the fires pretty much extinguished, but the media is still reporting that it's only 10% contained.

Postscript: The video caught the eye of a Eurovision reporter in Switzerland. He may use some shots.

Taking Pictures

George Kotolaris (1929-1990)

Editing pictures and video is a hobby, but pointing a camera at people can be a bit awkward — for me and for the subjects.  People may like the edited programs years later, but at the time, they tend to groan and joke so I feel a bit self-conscious.

Recently I have been thinking of George Kotolaris, Seattle’s iconic, garishly dressed, and somewhat unhinged but harmless eccentric and gate-crasher. He too had a hobby of taking pictures of people. That was back in the days of film cameras. I doubt if his Kodak Brownie had film in it, but he pointed his Brownie often, asking people to pose, often with his mother, Pansy.

I would regularly see George and Pansy at St. Mark’s, the Episcopalian cathedral on Capitol Hill. Each Sunday from late 1970 to about 1973, I used to chauffeur Joshua Green to St. Mark's for church.

Joshua Green was another Seattle institution. He and his family owned Peoples National Bank, the third largest bank in Washington at the time, before it was gobbled up by US Bank. He came to Seattle from Mississippi when he was seventeen. That was in 1886.

Joshua Green (1869-1975) and his wife, "Missy".
Both lived over a hundred years.

He made his fortune in the shipping business running a mosquito fleet during the Klondike gold rush 1896-1899. As roads and automobiles proliferated in Puget Sound, he saw the handwriting on the wall and in 1927, he got out of the maritime shipping business to devote himself to banking. His shipping company became the nucleus for the then newly formed Washington State Ferry System. He was a multi-millionaire back in the days before wealth got concentrated in billionaires. In 1968, Governor Dan Evans named him Washington Man of the Century.

My brother got the job of Joshua Green's weekend chauffeur and passed it on to me in late 1970 after I got out of high school. I was seventeen. Joshua Green was a hundred and one.

I would help Mr. Green out of the car and up the cathedral stairs, then wait in the car until I saw him come out at the end of whatever Episcopalians do for Sunday service. George and Pansy were often with the congregation coming out of the church, George trying to take pictures of the old man as I would be trying to get him back down the stairs and settled in the front seat of the car. So George was a bit of a nuisance.

Which is a bit how I feel pointing cameras at people — a bit of a nuisance.

Every Sunday as we drove away from St. Mark's Cathedral, and I do mean every time, the old man would remark, “I don’t know why I go there, but I feel better afterwards.”

Outdoor TV

Evenings are warm, the garden is pleasant, and we can pick up our Wi-Fi signal in the garden. For years I have been wondering about watching video outdoors -- like the drive-in movies of long ago.

We finally did it. In these times of social distancing, we can invite a couple over and entertain outdoors and watch the telly, all the while keeping a discrete distance.