The EPA granted California permission to require small engines (which generally have dirtier emissions than their larger cousins) to have catalytic converters that cut smog by 40%.
The law goes into effect January 1st. Every little bit helps.
Eagle Mountain is a well-preserved, fairly recently operating ghost town. It's privately held land just southeast of Joshua Tree National Park, surrounded on three sides by federal property. It was once a mining town. Then, when that got unprofitable, it became a prison site. Now that's gone, so the owners are trying to turn it into a dump.
According to the Associated Press, the owners already have the rights to do so, and Los Angeles County wants to buy. The county
agreed to buy the Joshua Tree property for $41 million once the lawsuits were resolved and wants to send about 20,000 tons of garbage there each day for 100 years.
I made the mistake of reading and believing in the National Weather Service's reports for southern California last night. Rain was already falling in Los Angeles late Saturday night, and the reports said it would continue into Sunday afternoon, with 1-3 inches of snow in the upper elevations of the San Gabriels.
So I unset my alarm and prepared to sleep in on Sunday for a change. When I did wake up at 9:30, it was to crystal clear blue skies.
It only rains here maybe two weeks out of the year. You think they'd be able to get those days correct.
But oh well.
Because I'd feel bad if I didn't do something at least tangentially related to the outdoors on my Sunday, I made a trip up to Griffith Park to the Autry National Center. The museum itself is a pretty comprehensive interpretive history of the American West - it's early times, colonization, and Americanization. But of particular interest to hikers is their current exhibition, "Yosemite: Art of An American Icon."
It's a two-part, semi-staggered exhibition of works. The first consists of paintings, drawings, photographs, and artifacts from 1855-1969, the second from 1969 to the present. The opening gallery begins with early landscape sketches of the Valley, relatively undisturbed and pristine. Soon thereafter, the gallery is filled with promotional images intended to draw settlers and prospectors to exploit the same idyllic wilderness.
It's also got a few paintings of early Victorian hikers. Crossing a raging river on a log while wearing a giant dress and corset? Yeah, I think we have it easier.
The first galley also has an excellent collection of early Muybridge and Ansel Adams prints, as well as some really interesting paintings. Of particular note were the works by Chiura Obata (comprehensive but infuriatingly slow Flash site here, better image gallery here), a Japanese immigrant who captured the American landscape in a traditional Japanese style:
New Moon, Eagle Peak - Chiura Obata
Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point - William Hahn
And on the flipside, there's the iconic "Woman with Scarf at Inspiration Point" by Roger Mitnick. At first, it appears to be another comment on the oversaturation of commerce in the Yosemite Valley. But there's something about that unnamed woman staring off into the distance ...
I can remember when I first rounded a bend in the road and caught a glimpse of the Valley in full. You see it, and you're speechless. Pictures don't prepare you, and all you can do is pull over to the side of the road and silently take it all in. Personally, while I'm inclined to reduce accessibility of cars into National Parks, I don't know if I could sleep soundly knowing that someone - anyone - was denied their chance to see something so majestic.This is a test post for the test blog I am currently in the testing phase with.
If you stumbled here for some reason, please pardon the experimentation.
