A Welcoming Hand

Thanksgiving and Easter can often be orphan holidays in my neck of the woods. Most of us expect to be home or at least with family at Christmas and maybe over New Years. But often Thanksgiving and Easter find families far apart perhaps because of time and distance.

The LaComb family entourage spends time in Palm Springs around either Thanksgiving or during the Christmas holidays depending on their own individual family obligations. When the whole gang is around for Thanksgiving like last year it’s a whirlwind of family activities, assorted adventures, and very little quiet time. But when they’re not here it’s an entirely different story. It’s still a family gathering but of a different nature.

It isn’t the holiday per say that makes the day different. The drinks and ordure’s ahead of time are the same. The meal, and often, the games we often play afterwards, remain the same. It turns out that Thanksgiving and Easter are no different here than Christmas or New Year’s Eve back in Minnesota. It’s still a wonderful gathering of like-minded friends and acquaintances. They’re just not immediate family.

It’s become a long-standing tradition for Sharon and I. One might say it was born out of Mother Hen’s need to entertain and the joy it brings to others who don’t have a place to call home on that special day. It’s what we do when regular family members aren’t around.

Perhaps, it’s like the lost generation in Paris who gathered for comfort, companionship, and mental stimulation. It’s like a folk gathering in Greenwich Village or a poet’s corner in North Beach. It’s a modern-day version of the Triangle Bar on Saturday night. We’re all ex-pats from different parts of the country brought here for a variety of reasons and simply trying to spend quality time with like-minded souls. Singles or couples are often a part of that equation.

More often than not, someone will know somebody or a couple here in town that doesn’t have a place to go for Thanksgiving or Easter. They then become a part of our extended family for the day. Familiarity is formed over good conversation, great food and genuine warmth and appreciation for the presence of others.

That’s when Palm Spring’s own version of Martha Stewart west gets to dress her table with relish…literally. There’s Rosenthal China, Waterford Crystal, antique silver settings, antique salt cellars, individual silver butter knives and place cards with crystal bowls. Sharon likes to say presentation sets the mood. It’s light and festive and warm and welcoming.

And for that brief afternoon, we’re all gathered among friends or newly-made acquaintances sharing a bountiful meal and enjoying one another’s company.

And when the day ends and we’re all disperse back to our regular lives, we’ve been enriched by that shared experience and the joy of giving.

I recently found out that young people nowadays have a new name for Thanksgiving. They’re calling it ‘Friendsgiving.’ I like that. It’s a fitting description of what we do here in the desert.

Three Strikes and I'm Getting Better

Failure can wrap itself in a cloak of many colors. Unexpected job loss and life-changing events can become pivotal points in one’s life. It’s that water-shed moment where what was once present is now past and the future is nothing more than a dim hope or vapid expectation on the horizon.

In her new book entitled: ‘The Up Side of Down,’ author Megan McArdle says that: “Getting to the upside of down often means letting go of your instincts, ignoring conventional wisdom and leaping for something no one has done before.” It’s changing course in mid-stream and forging ahead despite the uncertainty of what might lie ahead.

Ed Catmull was one of the founders of Pixar along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. In his book ‘Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration’ Catmull says that the ultimate goal here is to uncouple fear and failure. It’s changing that stigma that failure is bad and a sign of weakness. We must recognize that mistakes aren’t necessary evil. Instead, they are an inevitable consequence of doing something new. Echoing the mantra of many forward-thinking ventures: “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t taking enough risks.”

I’ve been there several times in my life; three in particular stand out. Yet in each instance I never knew just how fortuitous my failure would turn out to be. I never anticipated to fail so there was never some grand plan to deal with my stumble. Instead, some innate survival instinct kicked in and pushed me forward. At the time, I didn’t see it as a failure as much as a minor distraction like a foot-stumble off the starting line.

My first failure was running out of money at a private college and transferring to the University of Minnesota. While a large University may work for a lot of students, it was an unmitigated disaster for me. Beginning with 2500 students in the Introduction to Psychology class to the smallest class of 300 in Economics, I was lost before I stepped one foot on campus. I lasted two quarters and was politely asked to ‘take a break’ by the Admissions Office.

Two weeks after dropping out, I got my draft notice and spent the next two years in this man’s army. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. It was two years of learning to live on my own, continuing my focus on education, writing, travel and the beginning of collecting a lifetime of writing material (only I didn’t know it at the time).

My second failure came in my boss’s office at precisely 8:34 a.m. on July 23^rd, 1993…but who’s counting. It began with the usual pleasantries and then quickly evolved into “…(bla-bla-bla)…so we’re going to have to let you go.” And with that non-descriptive lame-ass explanation I was out of a job after thirteen years in public television.

It was the best thing that could have happened to me. In reality, it became a clean break from a mundane and political jungle to a forced self-reliance on my own skills to survive in the marketplace. It made me focus on my business, Sharden Productions, and my real estate ventures. And again, I never looked back.

My third and final failure came in the form of an obnoxious e-mail from an ego-inflated anal-retentive individual who didn’t like the video programs I was producing for local community television broadcast. His criticisms were ripe with subjective opinions and self-induced visions of grander. It was at that point that I declared to my computer that “I don’t need this _____ anymore” and with that eloquent announcement, I folded up my video production and distribution business and focused my fulltime energies on writing.

In retrospect, each stumble, loss, rejection, distraction, and life-changing event in my past has nudged me toward this stage of my life where story-telling in multiple disciplines has become my new passion. Catmull reminds us that: ‘we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.’

Some folks are much quicker at failing their way to success. It took me sixty plus years and a life-time of learning just to get where I am now. I’d love to say it’s all part of some grand plan but it’s not. Just one more attempt at doing what I love best and stumbling every couple of steps on the way.

Each failure was a step in the right direction for me. I just didn’t know it at the time. Life stumbles can be that way sometimes.

An Evil Wind Blows

One of the rude jokes among residents of the Coachella Valley concerns the aroma sometimes pushing up from the South. Once again, it’s another fish die-off at the Salton Sea. Over the years, there have been enough newspaper articles about the fish kills, rank odors and morbid housing scene along its shores that no one would want to venture down there at any time.

That’s too bad because the Salton Sea is a fascinating area teaming with wild life and tired old relics of a bygone era of oceanic fun. It’s well worth a trip south from the refined communities that make up the greater Coachella Valley area. Of course, speaking like a native, in the twenty-four years we’ve been coming to Palm Springs, I hadn’t ventured down there myself for the first ten years. Ignorance was bliss and I was blissful…and wrong.

The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake measuring more than 35 miles long and 15 miles wide in spots. It has a surface area of over 380 square miles and sits at 332 feet below sea level. The sea was created back in 1905 as the result of an accidental break in a canal cut into the Colorado River. For 16 months, the river ran unchecked into the lowest area around; the salt basin which became the Salton Sea.

But it wasn’t the first time that the area had seen a large body of water. Thousands of years earlier, Cahuilla and other California Indians occupied those lands. When they first arrived, the Salton Sink held a much larger body of water – ancient Lake Cahuilla. Geologists estimate the sea has appeared and then disappeared about every 400-500 years.

After the Indians, came the first settlers and railroad men who built a line of the Southern Pacific Railroad through a part of the sea. Nearby agriculture began to grow in what is now the communities of Coachella, Thermal and Mecca.

By the mid-fifties, the Salton Sea had become a major recreational water resort area for Southern California. But two hurricanes; Kathleen in 1976 and Doreen in 1977, caused such wide-spread damage to neighboring farm lands that the runoff caused a major increase in the salinity of the sea. That, in turn, caused major fish-kills and bird-kills and created such a major issue with noxious odors that residential development came to a stop.

Today the salinity level of the sea stands at 45 ppt. Only the tilapia fish is able to survive in such waters. While fishing is still good for the tilapia, fish kills continue to plague the area with their harsh smells.

Along the northeastern edge of the Salton Sea lies one of the world’s most important winter stops for migrating birds traveling the Pacific Flyway. The migration begins in October and by January more than 400 species of migrating birds fill the skies above the sea. By the end of May, the birds have moved on.

Like any other large natural area in California, there is much more than just the sea in the Salton Sea area. Over the centuries the fragile ecosystem of the area has provided sanctuary to an extremely diverse collection of wildlife and the critical habitats that support and nurture them.

For example, the sea holds millions of fish that feed the masses of wintering birds, including herons, egrets, brown and white pelicans, and kingfishers. In the fall, birds of prey arrive. Among them are peregrine falcons, osprey, and ferruginous hawks.

The fields and wetlands adjacent to the sea support huge flocks of snow geese, ducks, sandhill cranes and California’s largest population of burrowing owls.

Plans to reclaim the sea and turn it back into a major recreational area have begun and stalled dozens of times over the years. But in 1998, Congress finally passed the Salton Sea Reclamation Act directing the Secretary of the Interior to prepare a feasibility study on restoration of the Salton Sea. Slowly but surely, progress is being made to turn the tide in that direction.

The Salton Sea and its immediate vicinity have many recreational activities to offer, including: camping, bird watching, fishing, hiking, boating; use of personal watercraft; hunting and off-roading.

It will take years, perhaps decades before the sea might possibly return to its past glory. More feasibility studies are being made, more funding is being sought and grand schemes hatched. The possibilities for commerce, recreation and development are enormous. Talk of Lithium fields suddenly discovered have a lot of politicians licking their lips. Time will tell.

Until then the Salton Sea is a magical place for walk the shoreline, observe the birds, and time your visit to avoid the smell. A small price for a wonderful watery treasure in the middle of the desert.