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.

Sleeping Rattler

This sleeping rattle snake was no problem. I was watering the oleander when I noticed this coiled up rattler getting wet. It never flinched from its mid-afternoon nap. Shari called Rural Metro and presto! The snake barely moved as the fireman scooped it up and plopped it into a plastic bucket.

Things have changed, the fireman told us, since Rural Metro dumped their collected rattlers at Reddington Pass.  See Mileage Marker 4. It seems Fish & Wildlife did not approve, so now the Rural Metro firemen dump snakes a mile or a mile and a half up-wash from where they are removed.

"How far do these rattlers range?" I asked the fireman.
"About a mile or so."

I suppose we may be seeing this critter again. If it is still like Sleepy of the Seven Dwarves, should be no problem.

Binghamton Cemetery

Just down the road from us is the Binghamton Cemetery founded by Mormons in 1899. The Mormons were an early Anglo presence in Arizona. They established a farming community by the Rillito River and named it Binghamton. The farming dried out as water became increasingly scarce, but there is still a Mormon church and community in town, and probably a dozen grave markers bearing the Bingham name.

"TO BE OPENED BY GOD"

I like to take Nazar the Wonder Dog there for walks because I can let him wander off leash and do what dogs do — smell things. The graveyard is a popular hangout not only for the occasional dog-walker and dead people, but also for local packs of coyotes.

I like to go there and reflect on the graves.

For a year or more our morning walks have been in the Finger Rock Wash, so it was with fresh eyes that Nazar and I recently wandered back into the graveyard. In addition to the fresh mounds of dirt evidencing the internment of new residents, there was evidence of upscale improvements.

"HANDCART PIONEER"
Contrary to wagon trains depicted
in Western movies, most people
could not afford a team of horses
or a covered wagon. They
pulled or pushed handcarts.

The main dirt driveway and the side ones that organize jumbles of graves into lines and rectangles had been marked with decorative metalwork street signs. The main driveway had been named Bingham Lane, suggesting the others were also named after illustrious pioneer Mormon residents: Webb Lane, Young Lane, Hardy Lane, Abegg Lane, and Farr Lane.

Additional land had been cleared of sage and creosote brush and a fifth side driveway, Nelson Lane, leveled out. Apparently, there is ongoing demand for cemetery plots.

Despite the recent improvements, and despite a sign by the gate warning that grave decorations require approval, the cemetery remains major funky.

The place is delightfully littered with sandy soil, desert scrub, the occasional mesquite, palo verde and acacia tree, plastic flowers, faded US flags and Christmas decorations, children's toys, and shiny marbles, souvenirs, mirrors and baubles like the trinkets Europeans used to trade for ivory and animal hides. There are lots of whimsical sentiments carved in stone. The overall effect is very organic, not at all as sterile and unreal as the usual manicured, regimented, restfully green, formal cemetery. Binghamton is a cemetery on a much more human level. Consequently it is a very inviting place in which to wander and ponder.

"MY IMMORTALITY IS IN MY BOYS"

Cemeteries are places that evoke metaphysical perspectives. The most obvious to me is the admonition in Ecclesiastes: all is vanity. Nothing in life is permanent. It is a sentiment that underlies all spiritual traditions; not just impermanence, but also that reality is an illusion and a delusion.

There is a joke about how to make God laugh. Tell Him your plans.

People generally do not deal well with reality. There are people, many people, who have a hard time with a reality that is impermanent, spontaneous and unpredictable, so they box it inside a conspiracy theory. Religion ends up catering to such people who want simple answers to questions that have none, at least no explanation that can be expressed in words.

Grave markers with one date.

Living people bring many different perspectives to a graveyard. Some bring sadness as they visit partners, parents, siblings and children. Even a casual graveyard visitor, like I am, experiences the unavoidable sense of residents who have been forgotten. Some mounds are marked "unknown." Others are untended and suggest abandonment. Understandably, we want lives with meaning, and to be remembered in life and beyond is evidence of meaning.

In Binghamton, it seems there are too many buried children. Some, sadly, have but a single date on their headstones. One was stillborn. Others died as teenagers or young adults. Their graves are the most tended and decorated.

Graveyards express our ideas and hopes about eternity. Most residents in Binghampton are of the Mormon persuasion. There are lots of Mormon beliefs carved in stone.

Mormons have very literal ideas about eternity. The Mormon Church teaches that its services are indispensable for a happy eternity. Followers are not just married, they are "sealed" in Mormon temples. Families, like a day in the life of Bill Murray's character in the movie Groundhog Day, are forever. Except even in the movie the repetitive loop ended. For Mormons, there is no such relief. According to their beliefs, they are stuck with family forever. Come some happy time after death, we all get back together again — at least those "sealed" by the Mormon Church — just like before.

One down, one to go for eternity,

The good is celebrated but "the bad is oft interred with their bones," wrote the Bard. Only positive sentiments are carved in the stones of graveyards. It is a fantasy, like our ideas of eternity.

"Dear Mommie, we love you and
we will see you in heaven"
"Good bye for just a little while"

"Families are forever." Which families? Aunts, second cousins, great, great grandfathers and descendants you will never meet?

"Forever young" is commonly carved on the graves of children. They are stuck in time. Residents whose lives spanned six, seven or eight decades are not marked with the sentiment, "Forever old" or "Forever deathly sick". Who decides at what age we live out an eternity? And, if your family is today's normal, why would you want to spend eternity with childhood traumas and sibling rivalries?

The thing is, even in Mormon graveyards there is evidence that eternity is not as tidy as a Mormon "seal" would suggest.

There a many grave sites set aside in eternity for the "sealed" couple. One spouse dies and the final date is chiseled into the joint grave marker. The temporarily surviving spouse is already named and birth dated. There are spaces for the corpse and the date of death.

Except, it seems, that sometimes the surviving spouse has a change of heart. The most obvious example is the modernistic sandstone grave marker for Mr. and Mrs. Mason. Sandra Beth lies buried. We do not know the name of her husband. His name was chiseled out and his plot lies empty. Did he find a new mate for eternity and remarry? One can imagine Mr. Mason stealthily entering the cemetery with hammer and chisel, then going to work on his side of the "Mason" marker.

The Durham grave, 2018

The Durham grave, 2007

More subtle, and now hidden by a clean-up crew, is the unknown story of Armond and Juanita Durham.

Their's is a beautiful site. There are only two hills in the cemetery. One is reserved for the U.S. flag and a couple of park benches. The Durhams' joint burial plot is on the other hill.

A decade ago when I first was wandering around Binghampton Cemetery, I saw the simple plots where Armond was buried in 1981 and Juanita's site was waiting for the inevitable. Whoever decorated the grave had planted a saguaro cactus at the head of each grave site. What I saw a decade ago was that the saguaro planted by Armond's buried head had withered and died. The one waiting for Juanita was healthy and growing.

Since then, a groundskeeper or whoever has cleared out the dead saguaro, and Juanita's saguaro has continued to flourish. It has grown unusually tall and bears many arms.

Now maybe those two saguaros were already growing when Armond was buried. Juanita's saguaro certainly seems older than thirty-seven years. Typically saguaros begin growing branches after fifty or seventy years.

"GONE TO THERAPY"

Regardless whether a Durham or God planted the saguaros, there is no escaping the observation that the fate of the two saguaros is reflected in the death and life of the Durhams. Armond is dead and buried. Juanita was nine years younger than Armond and was only forty-three when he died. If she is still alive, she is eighty-three. Maybe her time has not yet come to be buried beside Armond.

I prefer to think that after Armond died, she went on to live a happy and fruitful life, just like her saguaro.

The Window Install

It's nothing brawny men can't handle. Lift, carry, turn upright, make sure the outside face is facing outside, ease one side in, then center. Piece of cake.

It makes me wonder whether the pyramids were built using suction cups to carry the blocks of stone.

The Window Crash

 

The window seal was broken when we bought the house ten years ago. The streaks inside the double pane were irritating enough, but the rotted frame in which it sat was even more troubling. Previous owners had heavily watered the flower bed below the window without regard to the damage it was causing. The initial rot introduced, multiple patches over the decade, whether caulk, Bondo or epoxy, cracked and failed with time. It was time to bite the bullet and replace the window.

The good news is that the rot was limited to the old wooden window frame and the two-by-sixes on which it sat. Only a few inches of stucco and backing had to be cut away to make room to jam in two new two-by-sixes made of treated lumber. It was an all-day job for two, working from sun-up to sun-down.

They say the replacement window will weigh about four hundred pounds. Judging by the weight of the broken glass (most, but not all of it) that is sitting in our trash can waiting to be picked up (hopefully) this morning, I believe it. Four guys with big suction caps placing a four hundred pound piece of glass in its aluminum frame? Stay tuned for the installation, hopefully within a week or so