The wind is cold.
Leaves one by one
are cleared from the
night sky.  The moon
bares the garden.

– Princess Shikishi (d. 1201)
translation by Hiroaki Sato

Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility monopoly we now know has been playing Russian Roulette with the underground gas pipelines running to households over much of California, got called on the carpet yesterday. The state Public Utilities Commission—which, like watchdogs everywhere, has largely been asleep at the switch, waking and rousing to action only after the fact of some calamity—set a March 15^th deadline for PG&E to provide documentation that it actually knows what kinds of pipes it has and what condition they’re in. As expected, PG&E came up way short. In language obviously heavily vetted by high-priced liability lawyers, the company president attempted to make himself out as a noble hero by promising to take aggressive action at this late date to set things right.

According to the Chronicle, “The company did not say how much the testing and replacement are likely to cost or whom it expects to pay for it: shareholders or the company’s customers.”

God forbid that the geniuses at the top, who it’s a safe bet are paid astronomically greater sums for their contributions to the public good than the employees who do the actual work, might be held accountable for their abysmal management and have some of their personal fortunes clawed back. That’s not the American way, unfortunately. But it’s also something that, one way or another, is going to have to change.

One of the major questions arising from the unfolding disaster in Japan is whether or not nuclear power is a reliably safe alternative to fossil fuels. In the abstract, I have an open mind on this subject, although living in one of the world’s top earthquake zones is reason enough for caution. Theoretically, the scientific risk analysis can be worked out. The bigger problem our society faces is, how can we trust a company like PG&E to run them? If, heaven forbid, anything went wrong at PG&E’s nuclear reactor at Diablo Canyon, who would believe a word their management said? There’s a real problem here. Corporate spin has had its day.

Rainy day, it suits my mood. The scale of the unfolding disaster in Japan is impossible to take in.

This morning I went to the local hardware store to buy a replacement compact fluorescent light bulb for my kitchen. Without a knowledgeable salesperson, you practically need a PhD. to find what you’re looking for amidst the extensive selection. There’s a code for the proper size needed to fit in the recessed ceiling receptacle, there’s a code for the wattage and how that translates from regular light bulbs, there are different colors of lighting, etc. etc. They’re arranged by brand, rather than, say, all the size R40s together, and GE is trying to elbow out the competition with its own line of “eco” bulbs. It’s nuts. Fortunately, a friendly salesman helped me find what I needed. After we’d sorted out all the hieroglyphics, he mentioned that it might be soft white instead of whatever I currently had (meaning it might not match the other three kitchen lights). He had already been responding favorably to my sarcastic quips, so he totally got it when I said, “Forget it – I won’t even notice. There are certainly worse problems to have.”

“Especially these days,” he replied. We didn’t even mention Japan. It was nice to have someone quietly bear witness to the absurdity of the over-consumption orgy that is modern American life.

It is impossibly painful to even begin to contemplate what survivors in the affected areas must be going through. The third massive blow of problems with the nuclear reactors is the most bitter of ironies. This terrible tragedy is a sobering reminder of how important it is to never lose sight of the things in life that truly matter. May the Japanese people find the strength and resources to recover to the greatest extent possible, and may this crisis serve to remind people around the world that we are all interconnected in the great web of life.

“…headlong overproduction, and the frenzy of marketing and consumption that it presupposes, make it harder for all of us to decide how much—of anything—is enough.

I read that phrase by Kenneth Baker, the Chronicle’s art critic, in a short exchange yesterday referring to levels of pathology in different people’s hoarding instincts. I love how concise it is in capturing a central issue of our time. Hardly anybody’s needs are being well-served these days by our politics and social policy, but it’s going to be a gawd-awful mess trying to figure out how to change business-as-usual and make the changes stick.

Meanwhile, I heard in the news this morning that Charlie Sheen has begun booking venues for a “Torpedo of Truth” tour, and that his amassing of a million Twitter followers within the first 24 hours of opening an account last week will probably serve to launch Twitter into the big time, business-wise. All this even as the LAPD searched his home last night for guns that might violate the restraining order his most recent ex-wife, the mother of his two toddler sons, has taken out against him. Only in California. This is unlikely to end well for Sheen and the people who care about him. In-your-face nihilism is hardly something to celebrate.

White sage, Salvia apiana, is a native sage that grows wild in the Southern California mountains. The dried leaves are intensely fragrant, and are used as a healing and cleansing incense. The aroma of one burning leaf can permeate an entire house. I had a bush in Berkeley years ago, grown from seeds that a friend of a friend got by hiking up into the mountains and harvesting them from a wild plant. I still have a stash of the dried leaves. But I moved on from the house, and I was never able to get the seeds I harvested from that plant to sprout.

Fortunately, these days white sage doesn’t seem to be as scarce a commodity as it was twenty or so years ago. I’d like to plant it in my new garden, and I’ve been scouting around for sources that might have it at retail. I found some seeds at a Native American shop in Berkeley a few weeks ago, but I haven’t had a chance to get them started. Today I lucked out — I found a thriving plant at the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens. If I can succeed in getting it established here, it will be magical.

Watching from afar the revolutionary wave that is sweeping the Arab world, I am struck by how the essence of each situation distills down to the question of whether or not members of the armed forces will revolt and switch sides when ordered to start shooting at the civilian population, and whether or not members of a revolutionary uprising can unite behind a designated leader and message. May the flowers of 1,000 new democracies bloom, even though not all of them will be benevolently inclined towards the good old United States. This is another of those historical moments that we have to go through in order to reach a better place. As the Age of Imperialism draws to a close, more of our resources will be brought to bear on the very real work of forming a more perfect Union. Finally.

As a native Californian, having been a regular visitor to Walt Disney’s original Magic Kingdom from baby stroller days throughout my childhood, my default assumption when something looks too perfect tends to be that some sort of special effects wizardry must be involved. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; I just usually like to know if something is naturally occurring or it it has been tinkered with.

I did a bit of nursery hopping this morning, because the landscaping project is getting to the fun part. A plant caught my eye that at first glance I thought couldn’t be real: the flowers looked like a string of paper hearts. But, they’re the real deal: a plant called Dicentra spectabilis, or “Old-fashioned Bleeding Heart.” Gorgeous. And it looks well-suited to the dappled shade side of my garden. Such fun!

The sun was going down on the Carquinez Woods. The few shafts of sunlight that had pierced their pillared gloom were lost in unfathomable depths, or splintered their ineffectual lances on the enormous trunks of the redwoods. For a time the dull red of their vast columns, and the dull red of their cast-off bark which matted the echoless aisles, still seemed to hold a faint glow of the dying day. But even this soon passed. Light and color fled upwards. The dark, interlaced treetops, that had all day made an impenetrable shade, broke into fire here and there; their lost spires glittered, faded, and went utterly out. A weird twilight that did not come from an outer world, but seemed born of the wood itself, slowly filled and possessed the aisles. The straight, tall, colossal trunks rose dimly like columns of upward smoke. The few fallen trees stretched their huge length into obscurity, and seemed to lie on shadowy trestles. The strange breath that filled these mysterious vaults had neither coldness nor moisture; a dry, fragrant dust arose from the noiseless foot that trod their bark-strewn floor: the aisles might have been tombs; the fallen trees, enormous mummies; the silence, the solitude of the forgotten past.

– Bret Harte (1836-1902)

O’er the hills far away, at the birth of the morn,
I hear the full tone of the sweet sounding horn;
The sportsmen with shoutings all hail the new day, 
And swift run the hounds o’er the hills far away.
Across the deep valley their course they pursue,
And rush through the thickets yet silver’d with dew;
Nor hedges nor ditches their speed can delay—
Still sounds the sweet horn o’er the hills far away.

– Francis Hopkinson (1727-1791)
N.B.  Francis Hopkinson was a signer of the Declaration of Independence