Spirit Home

There’s a place just up the road, past the small reservoir and beneath the gaze of West Rock. You won’t know it’s there unless you look. After a large snowfall or heavy rain, you can hear it shout; but for most of the year it unassertively murmurs from the concrete dam. How you get there is not a mystery, nor are there any obstacles or barriers other than a chained gate you can easily slide through. And yet, it is a secret place.

Once past the gated threshold, a short walk through brambles and tall weeds leads you to the creek bed, the life-blood of my Spirit Home. I call this place my Spirit Home because I am most at peace here; however, its beginning does not mirror this posture. The cold reservoir water cascades over 3 separate falls—each measuring about 10 feet tall—and shoots up and through cracks and divots in the solid shale rock.

Arrested Development

No, contrary to what some of you may be assuming (or hoping), I will not be writing about our beloved, yet short-lived TV show. (Although, if/when it strikes me, I just may find myself writing about The Big Yellow Joint or George Sr.’s love of ice cream sandwiches.) This time, however, the phrase will be used to describe what it means to work under the tightly regulated realm of government.

Love. Hate.

How can one place change so much from day to day?

Fresno is a place of extremes: Highest level of concentrated poverty, 80 miles from the tallest peak in the lower 48, a few hour’s drive to the lowest point in North America, the drunkest city in America , #1 in US auto thefts. Living in this place of extremes has shaped my feelings towards it in the same fashion. I love Fresno. I hate Fresno.

Watching the Corn Grow

If you drive into the city of Fresno from any direction, you will see the same repetition of scenery in slightly different forms. Highway 99 from the northwest takes you through vistas resembling Napa Valley, with curtains of grape vines stretching for miles-cultivated for any of the fruit's 3 forms of consumption: wine, grape or raisin. Coming in from the West follows a straight, flat highway 180 bisecting the most abundantly fertile land in our country, home to blinding amounts of cotton, tomatoes, lettuce, onions and cantaloupe. Highway 41 stretching into town from the South acts as almost a mirror image of its northern counterpart, Highway 99. Grapes are truly King in Fresno County; so much so, in fact, that there's a little town south of the city aptly named Raisin City. And to the East, slowly crawling up into the Sierra Nevada foothills along Highway 180, are the county's true poster-child: the stone fruits. Now, I have not tried any yet, for 'tis not the season, but I have heard that Fresno county's apricots, plums and peaches are the greatest in the world. "Like taking a bite into a juicy sphere of pure sugar," they say. After having already tasted the strawberries grown here, I trust every word any Fresnan tells me about the quality of fruits. They know their produce.

Memoirs of a Fresno Bus Patron

While most wake up groggy, dreading even the thought of sitting in an office all day.......I also wake up groggy, dreading even the thought of sitting in an office all day, BUT...there is some silver lining, some glimmer of hope that I will enjoy at least 30 minutes of my morning. I am proud to say I ride the bus to work every day (unless I have a very important responsibility that requires my immediate presence right after work; like my woodworking class). It is in this small time-frame, between the hours of 7 and 8, from the corners of Van Ness and Floradora to Shaw and Willow, that I find endless amounts of enjoyment.

The FAX bus system is not for the faint of heart. US city buses carry with them the stigma of being forced to ride mass transit because you are too poor to afford a car (excluding the large metropoleis like San Francisco or New York). This stigma is even more severe in Fresno because everyone has a car and it is almost impossible to get anywhere without one. Thus, FAX is left to service the homeless, meth-heads, crack-heads, destitute, indigent, mentally disabled, and the downright dirty. Throw a whole lot of crazy in the mix and you've got yourself a complete picture of Fresno mass transit. I have quickly learned to throw all assumptions of human behavior out the window while on the bus. It is because of this unexpectancy of the homo sapien that I get excited about my 30 minutes with these people every morning. The people I encounter on the bus embody the complete opposite of what we would view as a "normal." The following story is just one account of the typical FAX passenger.

The Promised Land

I have been to the Promised Land

and it is good.

The skeptic in me has always put aside Yosemite as "just another tourist trap" where the idea of going to Yosemite is what draws people, rather than the actual place. And assured myself, "I've seen an alpine landscape before, Yosemite is just another scene from the same book..."

Oh, was I mistaken.....