Recalling Yellowstone National Park’s Historic 1988 Fire Season | National Parks Traveler

Recalling Yellowstone National Park’s Historic 1988 Fire Season | National Parks Traveler:

No one realized it at the time, but when a lightning strike ignited a single tree in Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Valley 20 years ago, it was a dire harbinger of what would become a historic fire season in the park.
The resulting fire, baptized the “Rose Fire” in honor of a nearby creek, went out on its own after flickering briefly in June. Though it burned just that one tree, the fire was ominous nonetheless.
You could say that the 1988 fire season in Yellowstone was surprising in that it followed a spring that saw precipitation levels range 150-200 percent above normal. The problem, though, was that when May turned to June the precipitation abruptly left — it was almost as if Mom Nature twisted the garden spigot closed — leaving behind lush vegetation that quickly dried out and would soon serve as incredible kindling when the high, dry heat of summer in the Rocky Mountain West set in.

We visited Yellowstone a few years after the fires and were stunned by the damage. It’s been on our list for a couple of years to get back, but life hasn’t cooperated (yet).
But what struck me reading this is that this explains — almost exactly — what’s going on in California this year. Early wet winter, and then it stopped. And now the fires, which have been scary in their number and intensity. I remember watching the foothills around the bay area go golden, weeks earlier than usual, and thinking to myself “this is not good”.
Unfortunately, I was right. And it looks to me to be something that’ll get worse before it gets better this year.

Will he stay or will he go?

Why trade Cheechoo?

Sharks captain Patrick Marleau is a name making the rounds this week along with his teammate Jonathan Cheechoo.
Ok, I get the Marleau rumors. His salary, and last season’s performance, warrant rumors and speculation. But why in the world would the Sharks want to trade Cheechoo?

So the hot rumor is that Marleau or Cheechoo might be leaving San jose in the next 36 hours or so. or maybe not…

Mike Chen wonders why. As I said about a month ago:

Everyone should just be happy Michalek can still eat solid food after that Brenden Morrow hit. As for Cheechoo, he could no doubt bring back something substantial … as long as opposing general managers don’t have access to his postseason stats.

or as long as opposing general managers see the upside Chechoo has, and see their ability to pull it forward in their system. The same exact comment could have been made a year ago about, say, Mike Ribiero in Dallas, no?

And both Michalek and Cheechoo could continue to mature and bloom in San Jose, too. I certainly don’t want to see both leave. I’d personally not want to see either leave. But if (as people keep saying, and I don’t really disagree) there’s a chemistry issue, or a “not clicking” issue among the forwards, then things need to get shuffled; and you don’t five a problem with the top six forwards by trading a fourth liner. These are bold and clearly controversial moves — but if the answer was simple and easy, it’d have been done by now.

To be honest, my feeling hasn’t changed much.

My view of this falls down to a simple logic puzzle:

If new coach Todd McLellan feels that Marleau is his captain moving forward, and that he can fix this team without changes, you do nothing.

If McLellan wants to change captains, then you trade Marleau.

If McLellan wants to keep Marleau as captain, but feels a change is needed among the top six forwards, you trade Cheechoo.

You CAN remove a C from a player and keep them on a team, but teams rarely seem to do that, and it rarely seems to go well; it’s a bit of a slap at the player, no matter how it’s framed, and a fresh start seems to work best for everyone. It did happen in Dallas with Modano and Morrow, but bluntly, there were hurt feelings all over the place (and honestly, I think Modano is still hurt and pissed) — but the two players and the team made it work, and they have the professionalism and personality to do so.

I’m not implying that Marleau DOESN’T — if anyone on the Sharks team could take a demotion with grace, it’s Patty — but it just seems like a high risk move to remove the C and not trade him. This team doesn’t need internal controversies and schisms. So either Marleau is the captain, or he’s playing elsewhere. you can bet taht’s been a continuing discussion among Wilson, Marleau and McLellan since the hiring.

My gut feel? I think a deal’s going to get done. Maybe 70% likelihood. If a deal gets done, 75% chance it’s Marleau that moves. 5% chance both get moved in separate deals.

We’ll know soon.

Update: from Edward Fraser at the Hockey News. He’s right, unless McLellan doesn’t see Marleau as Captain.

The Hockey News: Edward Fraser’s blog: THN.com Blog: Sharks would regret trading captain Marleau:

One of the names most bandied about – as it seems to be year after year – is Sharks center Patrick Marleau.

While his rumored deal to Columbus makes perfect sense for the Blue Jackets –filling their No. 1 center role, allowing Derick Brassard to slide onto the second line – it would be a mistake for the Sharks to part with their captain, unless they received a deal that (pardon the pun) blows them out of the water.

On the Forecheck: Back in the saddle again – NHL Stats, Analysis, and Opinion

On the forecheck on Del Biaggio:

Back to the Del Biaggio story; there are many out there jumping on Gary Bettman and the NHL for failing to perform due diligence and getting caught looking foolish, but if you go back to the initial stories in this drama, you’ll see that Del Biaggio’s brokerage is being sued right alongside him. While we have to wait for all the facts to come out in court, the appearance is that the lenders were trying to independently verify Del Biaggio’s collateral claims, and received documents that, while appearing genuine, where in fact falsified by an employee there. The responsibility lies with the guilty parties here, folks, not the victims.

This won’t stop the Bettman bashers, but if the people they went to and got the due dilligence docs falsified them, not much the NHL could do. Be interesting to see how that plays out.

(of course, nothing will stop the Bettman bashers, especially not facts…)

Del Biaggio files for bankruptcy

Del Biaggio files for bankruptcy – San Jose Mercury News:

William “Boots” Del Biaggio III filed for personal bankruptcy today, listing $56.8 million owed to his top 20 creditors. A second bankruptcy filing, for his investment fund, lists debts of $10.6 million.

This is terrible for Del Biaggio and horrible for the Predators fans (from all accounts, it’s inconvenient for the Preds ownership group, but do the fans really need one more crisis to worry over?) — but I gotta believe one person giggling quietly into his corn flakes is Greg Jamison, managing partner of the San Jose Sharks, because a year ago, Del Biaggio was a minor partner of the Sharks, and he sold his stake so he could try to get a team into Kansas City (and his stake in Nashville STILL looks to me to be a long-term play towards that goal. That goal has now been “haseked” and cleared out of the crease…)

there are some who want to point a finger of blame at Bettman for this, mostly because they point a finger of blame to Bettman for everything including sunspots (hell, some of the pundits, especially in Canada, even take good news, declare it to be really BAD NEWS, and then blame Bettman for it. Horrors, the league isn’t perfect and as financially successful as the NFL and NBA combined. Heads must roll!) — but the reality is that as new, younger investors are coming into the league, they’re coming from (in many cases) the high tech world. And it’s now coming to light that lots of high tech companies took, well, liberties in their interpretations of financial regulations.

This isn’t Bruce McNall playing games with coin speculation, and not something that is going to be found by a standard financial evaluation until the SEC comes in with its army to go over the books. The reality is that a new generation of owners are coming into the NHL (a good thing, IMHO), and some of them are coming from an industry that’s come under scrutiny and falling short of the ideal practices. Plus, the economy has turned south in a big way, and even people with moderate practices are feeling the pinch.

I don’t know what the league could have done here other than avoid taking in any new money; that’s not going to happen. There are always going to be owners in trouble or who fall onto hard times. That was true here, it was true of McNall and Pocklington, and from what I can tell, what Del Biaggio is accused of isn’t nearly the kind of crap that went on in buffalo a few years back.

And for what it’s worth, no league’s perfect. the NFL has Al Davis and his screaming band of rabid lawyers — and remember when the 49ers were the franchise every other franchise in every sport wanted to model themselves after? Or baseball turning a blind eye to the steroids scandal?

The NHL’s not perfect, but at worst it seems no worse than what we see in other leagues. It happens — lots of money is involved, and where there are lots of money transactions, there are occasionally going to be flubs and fumbles and mistakes (and the occasional fraud). It’s how the league deals with them that matters — assuming the charges hold up.

.Mac Morphs into MobileMe

TidBITS Networking: .Mac Morphs into MobileMe:

Although still costing $99 per year (with a free 60-day trial), the idea is that MobileMe is less a separate service and more of an extension of what you already do on your Mac, PC, iPhone, or iPod touch. For example, your email messages and mailboxes will apparently instantly be the same, whether on your iPhone or your computer, a feature that many users should welcome with open arms. And, contacts and calendar items will sync automatically.

Exactly. While some of the geek pundits are downplaying MobileMe and the cost, they keep listening to the echo chamber and not paying attention to the core market .Mac served and MobileMe is going to dominate. For me, the improvements announced today are wonderful — assuming Apple comes through in delivering AND delivers them in a reliable form.

So I’ll likely give it a few weeks, then hook up a family pack (for myself, Laurie and mom to each have their own environment) and move my email from my hosting service and google over to MobileMe. For something that’s (a) tightly integrated, (b) reliable, (c) works appropriately between the web, my macs (plural), and my iPhone (when I buy it), that’s worth the money.

Yeah, I COULD patch it all together, and in fact, I have for the most part, having used things like gmail, google calendar, google bookmarks, Spanning Sync or Plaxo or whatever… But to pay a few bucks to let someone else do the grunt work and to have a single support contact for everything? let the geeks geek, I want to USE the damn thing, not maintain it.

And this is one of those places where the echo chamber of geekdom falls down badly. It’s never gotten .Mac, and I’m sure .Mac’s going to get ripped for the price (again), lack of social networking tools, etc, etc. What they don’t get is that a huge audience doesn’t care about or want those features. Their idea of social networking is passing around email to church group members and coordinating calendars for play dates and little league, and sending photos to grandma in Sun City.

So Apple’s never gotten much geekcred for .Mac, but keep getting good numbers of happy, paying customers. And now, it takes a quantum leap forward, and starts integrating the cloud into Mac OS X. This opens the door to all sorts of things down the road beyond “exchange for the masses”.

I love it. and I love the new iPhone. Both will be part of my toolbox in the next few months, once they prove themselves out.

To all the folks back at Apple who worked their butts off to build this, way to go. I like it.

Is there a thing called normal?

We buried dad friday at the Riverside National Cemetery, the busiest cemetery in the U.S. they had 73 burials planned that day, so things might seem hectic there, but they did an awesome job of not making people feel rushed or going through the motions. Color guard, taps.

We’ve hired the caterer and the mariachis and ordered a cake for the wake, which will be the 14th, his birthday. I’ll be headed back down again next weekend for that, then hopefully life will return to some semblance of normal. The last couple of months, honestly, have turned into a bit of a blur.

To those of you who’ve written, called, emailed, twitted, and whatevered — thanks. It’s helped. I hope to thank everyone personally, but in case I miss something or misplaced something along the way (quite possible in the chaos of the moment), here’s a thank you for all the kind thoughts.

– 30 –

My dad died today, quietly and not in pain. His body was just too frail to recover from the complications that set in with the triple-bypass. He had a feeling the end was near, I can’t tell you how many of his friends have told me in the last month that he felt he’d had a good life with no regrets, with his classic laugh and a smile. Fortunately for him, once the decline set in, it didn’t take long — as much as he loved life, he really hated doctors and hospitals, and being kept alive by machines was his real horror story, and we worked with the medical staff to accommodate him on that where we reasonably could. Everyone involved with Kaiser on this impressed the hell out of me, and have my thanks and respect.

I went down to help out the family when he went in for the tests and stayed around through the surgery, went down again in a hurry last week when things started to go the wrong way — and after coming up yesterday to get home for a bit, am headed down again tomorrow to help with the arrangements and to be there for the burial.

He went to Stanford (and hated when they changed their mascot to Cardinal, and never forgave them), drove a tank while helping to liberate Manilla, then spent significant time in Europe.

Dad was always a newspaperman, in the classic style, working for Stars and Stripes in Berlin during the airlift, and later as part of the first non-military-controlled paper for troops (which did not endear him to the establishment, something he loved doing…). Later on, he took over the family newspaper, until the industry changed enough that the town weekly basically went extinct — as I’ve said before, those of you who think the struggles of the newspapers is a new thing simply haven’t been paying attention; it’s been going on for 50 or more years, and this is just the latest phase.

Former board member and past president of the California Newspaper Publishers Association, active in historical preservation in orange county, later on in life a teacher — and proud to be seemingly the only liberal in the county, or so it seemed at times. Even more proud of his 50+ years together with my mom, and the times and travels they took together.

And so he’s written his final byline, and I speak for my entire family when I say we miss him but that we’re glad the suffering is done. It was a bit of a rough few days for all of us, but it’s starting to head back towards normal. Thanks to everyone who’ve popped in with kind words via email or twitter or IM or carrier pigeon; it’s nice to know people care, and it helps.

Burial is probably this weekend, and per his request will be private and family only; also per his request we’re planning a more public get together — including mariachis — for his extended (very extended) set of friends and compadres. If you know my dad and you’re hearing about this here, my apologies, it’s been a bit chaotic and we’re still digging through things to find contact info for everyone (and drop me a note if you need info to the wake).

Wherever he is, you can bet he’s making the local city council crazy, pounding away on a manual Royal typewriter, and playing catch with Pierre, his standard poodle that preceded him by a few years, and getting ready to watch the Lakers in the finals.

And over the next few weeks, life will start to return to normal, only quieter and a little less interesting for all of us that were influenced by him and proud to call him friend.

Rest in Peace, dad, you did good, and have earned the rest.