You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 16th, 2007.
Sunday is a time for reading. Actually, I spent yesterday kind-of sailing, as described in a separate piece below. I also cleaned out the attic and found some of my old text books on groundwater. Last evening I reread them, and here is a review of some classics that reward attention:
Wandering the by-ways of the Internet, this news release caught my eye: More than 12 million tons of radioactive waste will be moved away from the Colorado River, which provides drinking water for more than 25 million people across the West. The Department of Energy said the radioactive tailings about 750 feet from the river near Moab in southeastern Utah will be moved, predominantly by rail, to a proposed holding site at Crescent Junction, Utah, about 30 miles from the Colorado River.
The weekend was an orgy of hedonistic southern California pleasure: expensive coffee in the sun; a bike ride along the nine-mile beach; sandcastles besides the incoming waves; wonder at the ski kites that dominate Belmont Shores; and then to San Pedro harbor where we took off on my daughter’s 28-ft long Westsail. I first saw this yacht six years ago sitting high and dry on a dusty back lot east of Palm Springs. Years later and many hours and dollars of work, it now floats proud in the slip, a brilliant blue hull with red trim. We pottered about Los Angeles harbor, engrossed by the big ships and the tankers and the hoards of small boats that ply the calm waters inside the breakwater. We too stayed behind the protection of the breakwater, for beyond the waves were crashing on the rocks and there was news of coast guard action to help sailors in distress. The wind was blowing hard, very hard, all up and down the coast. And the conversation turned to the way the inland desert is heating up and sucking in cool air from the ocean causing the very winds we enjoy and/or fear.
