The California Files

The Drought: No End in Sight

Editor's note: I was invited by our neighbor and pal Jim Thomas to attend a Rotary Club meeting this morning. The featured speaker was Bill Patzert, the Jet Propulsion Lab's climatologist, who knows a thing or three about the drought. This is a topic that interests me so I went along. Patzert's comments didn't contain anything I hadn't already heard - at least until he delved into water politics by proposing that the state's agriculture interests should get less water so urban and manufacturing customers can get more. I don't see that happening anytime soon, for sure. But the talk was interesting, in any case. I ginned up a news story based upon what I heard. Here it is:

California's crushing water shortage probably won't end any time soon and likely will be solved only by redistributing some of the water now used by agricultural interests to residential and manufacturing customers.

That was the message from JPL/NASA climatologist Dr. William Patzert, who made this foray into state water politics during a presentation titled "The Drought: Are We In or Out?" Friday, Jan. 23, at a meeting of the Glendale, Calif. Sunrise Rotary Club.

He noted that the state's water distribution is based on legislation from the 19th century - essentially the days of the California Gold Rush - and said the state's water laws "are built for the 19th century, not the 21st."

Those water laws grant water usage based on the concept of "first in, first out." Many of the water districts that supply agricultural interests in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys are organized around senior water rights that date back to the middle of the 19th century. Because of their seniority, those districts are granted first priority on water usage.

Patzert said that California agriculture uses 80 percent of the state's water but accounts for just 2 percent of the state's economy, which he said is the seventh-largest in the world. He said the state's industry and its urban areas get from 10 to 15 percent of the available water.

He urged his audience to keep these points in mind when they vote for state representatives.

Audience members eager to know when the current drought might end heard Patzert assert that the chances that the current water shortage might end anytime soon are not good.

He said that the current drought now has stretched for more than 16 years of below-normal rainfall and said that January is shaping up to be the driest January in the state's history, just as the last three years have been the driest years in the state's history.

Characteristics of drought, Patzert said, are that they are large, regional, gradual and slow to change. He said that since the 1880s, six of every 10 years in the western U.S. have seen rainfall levels below normal.

And he said that rather than reflecting a severe shortage of water, the west enters drought conditions when annual rainfall totals fall just 15 percent below normal.

A striking feature of the current drought, which covers about a third of the U.S., is a persistent ridge of high pressure off the west coast that forces the Pacific Jet Stream to move northward so that it flows over Canada, rather than over the west coast of the U.S. This is important because the jet stream is what carries storms to the continent. Where it goes, rainfall goes.

This high pressure ridge is caused by something called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which slowly shifts water temperatures between warmer and cooler. The warmer those temperatures, the more likely a wet El Niño season. The PDO has been tending toward the cool, bringing a strong area of high pressure that pundits have named the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge.

When will that change? "That's the big unknown," Patzert said.

He said that unless February and March are extremely wet, California will see its fourth straight year of extreme drought in 2015.

The impact of the current drought is felt more strongly than that of previous droughts because during the last prolonged dry spell, which took place between 1945 and 1978, there were far fewer people in California and thus a far smaller demand for water. He said in 1900, the state had 10 million occupants and now it has a population of 40 million.

"We need better water storage and management," he said.

-JFT

 

 

 

Photography's Slippery Slope

I have for many years fooled around with photography. Indeed, it was part of my education in journalism school, complete with many happy hours spent in a darkroom.

But lemme tell you, photography today is an incredibly slippery slope, more now than ever before. Here's how far I have slid down that slope:

We all know that darkrooms are anachronistic, right? That's because darkrooms exist today in our computers in the form of Photoshop, a program that will do everything anyone could ever do in even the most sophisticated darkroom (well, except allow you to make out with your sweetie in a secure, dark room), plus much more. (Right, no more Dektol and fixer, no more developing tanks trays, timers, enlargers, etc. This is a good thing.)

So my workflow goes something like this: Shoot the photo, transfer it to my computer, fettle it using Photoshop, print it. And that's where the trouble starts.

Not everybody prints, but I do. I print 8 x 10 glossy prints of my very best images. I keep these in plastic display sleeves in big loose-leaf binders I can look at whenever I want to.

So having a printer, a good one, is an imperative. For years I've relied on an HP Photosmart all-in-one unit, the one you see here. Regular size. Inexpensive. Excellent results. But now it does goofy things when I print photos. Nobody can figure out why - and yes, I've completely worn out my welcome on the HP help line and wasted gallons of ink and pounds of paper.

Clearly a nuclear response - a new/another printer - was in order. Laura is partly responsible for this - she urged me to go whole-hog and obtain a dedicated photo printer. In criminal-justice circles, this is known as aiding and abetting.

So I drove over to Samy's Camera, our local paradise photo superstore and bought a real photo printer. The unit I choose is a long way from the high end, as these devices go. But it will print photos of up to 13 x 19 inches, which is bigger than I need, and the job it does is terrific. And I got a great price that is augmented by a nice rebate, which means the thing will cost me about what a new HP Photosmart would have cost.

But the thing is, as you can see, huge. I might as well have a golden retriever sleeping on my desk. Oh, wait - the cats never would stand for that, because sleeping on my desk is their private gig. But it's big. It's also very complex, with eight ink cartridges and a new set of controls and possibilities that I will have to learn. But I will indeed learn them.

So I'm set. I've got a supply of premium photo paper, including a few examples of really fancy canvas, bamboo and linen paper and more, and I'm set. Until I run out of ink. Which probably will happen pretty quickly.

Ah, well, I'll just have to make another trip to Samy's. Like I said - it's a $lippery $lope.

-JFT 

On the Santa Fe Trail

"Red chilies, green chilies, or Christmas-style?"

When a waiter asks that question, you know you are in Santa Fe. That's because here in New Mexico, the chili is a big deal. (And here on the left is the way they are displayed almost everywhere. As always, click on the picture, and on the ones to follow, to see it fullsize.)
And so is the difference between green chilies and red ones. (Clue: They turn red, and from merely hot to very hot, with age.)

My choice was Christmas-style - on other words, a selection of both. And on this occasion it was at the Plaza Cafe in Santa Fe for breakfast. Huevos rancheros, naturally.

Man, those chilies are hot, whichever style you choose. But that suits me just fine because we're here, at least in part, to chase down some hot New Mexican cooking.

We decided on a road trip this Christmas, since we have no family to keep us around home. So we loaded up the "Magic Carpet," as Laura calls her car, and headed out.

Stayed at the old St. Francis Hotel, just a block from the city's old plaza and the Palace of the Governors, which was built in 1610 and is the oldest continually occupied public building in the U.S. It's also where scores of Indian silver artists
offer their wares, which they spread out on blankets under the portico, so is very much worth a stroll.

It is this sort of history that draws us here. Also the food. And also the art. And also the altitude, which is right at 7,000 feet. And also the light, which because of the altitude and cleanliness of the air, is absolutely crystal-clear, so bright that it reveals what things, and colors, actually are supposed to look like.

We hit a couple of the city's best restaurants - the Santa Cafe and Geronimo, respectively, for dinner Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I preferred the former, I think. The latter was good but incredibly expensive. We wanted badly to get into Tomasita's, down in the old Railyard section of town and renowned for its traditional Mexican food, but the place was just too busy to seat us without a wait of at least an hour. Not-gonna-happen.com.

Canyon Drive, a short walk from the town center, is where you find art. Hey, this ancient street, filled with galleries housed in period buildings, is an art piece all its own. We poked through galleries, for sure, but mostly I enjoyed just walking the street and checking out the buildings.

It was cold here. Mornings saw the thermometer reading 17. Temps never rose above about 25 for the four days we were here. But Laura and I packed for this and so did well in spite of the fact that all four of us - Laura's sister, Marilyn Taylor, and her husband, Bob, were along on this expedition - were struggling with the flu.

For most of our visit we stayed close to town, either prowling the sidewalks for window-shopping opportunities or cruising the neighborhoods checking out the gorgeous homes. Expensive stuff. In fact, everything here is expensive.

Friday morning, after the Taylors headed for show reservations in Las Vegas, we headed for Taos and into the teeth of a storm. We stopped along the way to visit the 200-year-old church in Chamayo, and at first thought about completing our journey to Taos through Truchas, up in the mountains. But the storm got severe, the snow got deep, and the road got treacherous. We opted for caution over adventure so turned around and headed back, choosing the main route to Taos, Highway 84. But even that became treacherous, with very slow going.

Taos, like Santa Fe, seems to be trying to out-do Albuquerque as the King of Sprawl. We last were here some 25 years ago and found the amount of growth since then astounding. The historic plaza - that old Indian-killer Kit Carson walked here - seemed smaller and more down-market than we remembered, and certainly more-so than that of Santa Fe.

The real treat was a visit to the Taos Pueblo. This is a huge, rambling adobe structure - series of structures, really - at least 1,000 years old. It was built and remains occupied by the Red Willow People, named for the Red Willow Creek, which runs through the middle of the place, supplying the pueblo's drinking water.

Some anthropologists now think that perhaps the first inhabitants of New Mexico's pueblos were the remains of the Anasazi, who they think may have settled here after being driven from their cliff dwellings by drought. But nobody knows for sure.

Whatever the origin of these people, stepping into this village is like a step back in time. Modern amenities like plumbing and electricity are illegal here, so when you look at the pueblo, with snow on the ground and the smell of wood smoke in the air, you see it more or less as it was when the Spanish first saw it. In other words, visit here and you step back into the early 17th century.

Indian artists have shops here, so it's possible to enter at least small sections of this ancient structure and look around as you peruse the art on offer.

While doing just that we had a chance to chat with Richard Aspenwind, one of the artists, who told us that the people here are Indians. "I'm a Redskin," he declared. His take was that "Native American" is an appellation preferred by militant younger Indians who live in cities. It's a politically correct name, he felt, and not for him. Fine by me.

Aspenwind also told us a bit about the Catholic Church's influence, or lack of it, on his tribe. He said some tribe members do attend the pueblo's church, but whether they do or don't, they all observe the ancient tribal religion, which is nature-based. Hearing him talk about the sun and moon, and about animals such as the bear, then considering what a mess so-called Western Civilization has made of things, it was hard for me to not find this take on spirituality to be inviting. Well, hey, my mom always insisted that hiding back there somewhere there's a little bit of Indian blood.

We're home now and glad to be here, the Magic Carpet having nailed down a wonderful 34.7 mpg for this trip in spite of being conducted along in a very brisk manner. (We saw some incredibly cheap gas - premium for $1.80/gallon right outside Albuquerque.)

Rio and Vivi, the two cats, are happy to have us back. We think. But we're ready to go again because four days in Santa Fe are not enough. There is just so much to see and do there. We're thinking about how and when we can spend more time there to explore, attend Southwest Cooking schools, spend more time shooting photos, visit the various pueblos that dot the area, and much more. All it takes is time. And money.

-JFT

Merry Christmas!

Christmas, a melancholy time of year? Yes, at least a little, we think.

Thanksgiving bubbles past us, clad in the delicious perfumes of a busy kitchen and the memories of family sharing, and then the awful truth hits us: It is December 1.

Good grief, can that be? Where has this year gone? Have we made the most of the year? Have we made the most of our time? Have we done all we meant to do the way in which we meant to do it?

But the melancholy fades quickly enough as we dig the Christmas supplies from their storage boxes in the garage and string the lights up on the eaves of the house.  Next come the poinsettias and the wreath on the door. Then things get serious: The tree and pondering which set of decorations to use (I'm partial to the little handmade German items I've collected at christkindlemarkts for more than 40 years but Laura has her favorites too), the stockings, the candles, the shopping, the wrapping, the Christmas music and finally, the anticipation.

Sure, the melancholy resurfaces as we ponder lost loved ones, parents and more, who are no longer present to help us enjoy this special season.

That sadness is important, I think, because it helps us realize how vital it is to make the most of the present and take care of those we have with us now, even as we recall the warmth and joy of Christmases past.

For we squander that important opportunity if we fail to feel the season's joy, to add to our warehouse of lasting holiday memories with friends and family.

And so it is that Laura and I extend our best wishes to you this holiday season. We wish you all warm kitchens, warm hearths and warm hearts. Merry Christmas!

 - JFT

The Bulge

It was at this time of year in 1944 that elements of the German Army began its last big initiative of WW II. It pushed west through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and made good gains.

But the push was contained and then stopped. After much fighting and dying on both sides, the weather cleared and U.S. air power took control of the skies.

That was the end of that little adventure. But it really wasn't a little adventure; to refer to it in that way demeans it. It was the stuff of history, the stuff of legend. It was the Battle of the Bulge.

Laura and I visited the area a couple of years back with the idea of peeking into whatever museums we could find and visiting, especially, the forest between Bastogne, on the south, which held the Americans, and the village of Foy, on the north, which held the Germans. That forest was where the 101st Airborne's Easy Company, now memorialized as "The Band of Brothers," fought at the very northern limit of Allied lines and held. This photo, which as always you can click on to enlarge, is a memorial to Easy Company.

The central part of Bastogne is little changed, though on its fringes the town has expanded with modern construction. Foy, on the other hand, a tiny place, showed little sign of post-war development. (And by the way, you can visit this region yourself, and these places, on Google Earth.)

I have no idea what that forest was like then, but today it's a farmed lot, a place where farmers grows trees in neat rows. So it's extremely unlikely, it seems to me, that any of the trees there today are old enough to have witnessed the battle that took place there so long ago. Still, it's interesting, and very evocative, to walk this wood, listening to the pristine silence, pondering depressions in the soil and wondering if those depressions - Laura is sitting in one of them here - were foxholes, or shell holes, or just places where a tree stump was ripped from the soil.
They are perhaps a little bit of all those things, I suspect.

Bastogne is home to several museums that display the usual artifacts of war, including weapons, shell casings, helmets, uniforms, and so on. What makes them interesting is that this stuff, this effluvia of violence, continues to be dug up by farmers tilling their fields.

As you might expect, there are monuments everywhere. And also equipment. We found several nicely restored tanks, including a Sherman, parked in Bastogne's main square, with a thundering shell hole right through it.

And out in the countryside there's an especially poignant cemetery containing the last resting places of hundreds of German soldiers, patriots on the wrong side of an ugly, losing cause.

It's a place of blood, noise, courage, misery and determination. Today the countryside is peaceful, with nothing more falling on one's ear than the lowing of cattle and the racket of farm tractors.

But once upon a time, here at this place, a few good men said no to tyranny and hate. And they backed it up with blood and steel. We all are in their debt.

-JFT

Coloma

OK, you Californians, what is the single most important thing to have influenced our state?

I don't know that there is any consensus on the answer, but if you guessed "the Gold Rush," you can't be far wrong.

It's what turned the state from a sleepy, out-of-the-way place into a destination for the get-rich-quick throngs of people known as the '49ers, it built Sacramento, it's what made San Francisco the metropolis it is, it's what caused Congress to rush California into the union, and, among other things, it's what made the Gold Country, as the region along the west side of the Sierra Nevada is called, such a jewel of historical locations.

The Gold Country, of course, is explored via a thin and winding road called, appropriately enough, Highway 49. The road is a necklace studded with gem-like towns. Some of them are large and thriving - Sonora, for instance, Placerville and, off 49 just a bit, Murphys. Some of them are tiny wide spots in the road like French Camp, Knight's Ferry, Chinese Camp and Sheep Camp. Yes, you have to depart from 49 to reach some of these hamlets, but the highway remains the thing that links them all to the Gold Country.

And then there is Coloma. It's up in the northern reaches of Highway 49, above Placerville. Blink and you're through it. It consists of an old-time general store, a post office, a Grange hall, a few homes, and a really fine state park.

The park is the thing, you see. It contains a replica of Sutter's Mill, the sawmill, overseen by foreman James Marshall, where in January of 1848, while working in the millrace, Marshall saw something, bent down and picked it up. To see this photo in a larger size, just click on it, please.

He was pretty sure what it was, but he wanted to be absolutely certain because at least at some level, he must have recognized the impact the discovery would have. So, the story goes, he showed it to an assayer and got confirmation. It was gold. He tried to keep a lid on his discovery but that just was not possible. And you know the result.

Laura and I have, over the years, crawled much of the Gold Country, exploring not just Highway 49, but once spending a week in our Jeep bumping along the dirt roads high in the mountains east of 49 in search of flumes, diggings and other 49er artifacts that remained off the beaten path. But we'd never got to Coloma, where it all started.

We fixed that oversight the week before Thanksgiving when we were in the Sacramento area. We took some time to visit Placerville, which is an utterly charming town whose core retains its Gold Rush character. Then we headed north on 49 to Coloma.

As I've noted, there's not much there. But a replica of the mill is there. Using Marshall's notes and early photos, state parks personnel sited the replica where the original stood, just a few yards west of the American River. It now is quite dilapidated, the millrace is not functioning, and it does not contain the water-driven saw of the original. But behind it is a sealed building that contains timbers conserved from the original mill, a fact that pleases me no end, as these huge timbers mark the core of California's modern history.

Before Marshall made his discovery, Monterey was the social and commercial center and capital of California. But gold changed everything. That wonderful city still contains a marker of its importance, the beautifully preserved Customs House,  which counted everything that came into and out of the state via the Monterey Pier, the region's lifeline to civilization.

But Coloma, tiny Coloma, contains the other marker of California's early greatness, the beginning of the Gold Rush and the rise of San Francisco as the west's most important banking city - and maybe, some might argue, the west's most important city, period.

If you get the chance, or have the opportunity to make the chance, go see Sutter's Mill. It's small and unprepossessing, but if you close your eyes, maybe you will hear the rush of the river, the shouts of workmen, the whine of the saw as it cuts timber, and maybe, just maybe, the ghost of James W. Marshall muttering to himself, "God almighty, gold. It's gold!

-JFT

Messages from the Past

We're lucky enough to have some old stuff around here. Uh, I mean, aside from me. I'm talking about musical instruments.

Among that old stuff is an ancient violin and an even older 5-string banjo. And what interests me is that onto each of these instruments, an owner - probably the original owner but there's no way to be sure about that - inscribed his/her name.

Into the upper-right-hand side of my violin, which I've owned since age 10, someone carefully inscribed "J.A. Fritsch, July 8, 1895." Who was this Fritsch and where was he/she when this inscription was made? And is that date a birth date, the day upon which this instrument became Fritsch's property, or something else?

The label inside informs us that this old fiddle was built to an Amati pattern. When I had it evaluated, I was told that it is of German origin and because of that, isn't worth a lot - but if it had been Italian, it would be worth a great deal. Built in Mittenwald, perhaps? No way to know, as the violin-building business in Germany in the 19th century was widespread.

The banjo? It's an S.S. Stewart Universal Favorite #3. I've had this thing since I was 19 or so and will keep it forever, though I rarely play it. One E.E. Curtsworth scratched his/her name and address, 2420 Fillmore St., San Francisco, into the pot's tension ring. The address is now the location of a jeweler's shop on the ground floor of a huge, post-earthquake concrete building. So did this instrument survive the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire in some little Victorian house like those few survivors still in the neighborhood? It just might have done. It certainly pleases me to think so.

There's no way to know for certain when it was built, as the Stewart factory's records are incomplete at best, but it apparently was built around 1885 in Philadelphia. Stewart built thousands of banjos, so what's interesting about this one is that its serial number is a low, four-digit number, so it's an early one.

These two ancient stalwarts, which share nearly 250 years between them, are just 10 years apart in age. I'd like to have heard them in a duet when they both were new. But at least I can hear them now, and I strongly imagine that they sounded then just as round and fine as they sound now.

-JFT

How Do You File Your Photos?

You shoot photos, right? You've got a digital camera and you snap away, recording family gatherings, your back yard in beautiful light, vacations, your pets and much more.

That's good. It's a healthy, creative hobby that keeps us all interested in lots of ways. I do it, and it certainly keeps me interested.

But here's my question: What do you do with the photos once you've made them?

I'm genuinely curious about your answer. I have friends who are over the map with this. I have a friend who shoots and then stores the memory cards in a desk drawer. I have friends who view their photos only on their computer screens. And I have friends who make random 6 x 8-inch prints, either at their local drugstore or on their home printer, and keep them in shoeboxes.

All of that is good, if that is what suits them. But this question occurred to me this morning as I was going through my prints.

Here is what I do: After a couple of hard edits, I save my photos on my computer, just like a lot of people do. But using my computer, Photoshop and a desktop printer, I also make 8 x 10-inch photos of a select few images, the very best ones.

This just seems natural to me, I suppose because I spent so much time when I was a college student making enlargements in a darkroom.

I've been doing this for quite awhile now. The result is that I've accumulated four large three-ring binders filled with these prints, which are stored in plastic display sleeves, two per sleeve.

What I did this morning was this: I went through those binders all to make sure the photos were in proper order. I also got rid of duplicates, of which there more than I would have thought.

I keep them in more-or-less chronological order, with the earliest ones being from slides that I've copied. Some of these are pretty old, and the copier I have isn't as sharp as I would like for it to be. But it does OK, so I've got stuff that I shot years ago on Kodachrome.

The selection goes from there to images made with one of those early
twisty Nikon Coolpix cameras through a succession of DSLRs and, lately, also a pocket-size point-and-shoot that creates really nice images.

The lesson I took away from today's exercise was that dang, I've spent a lot of money on ink and paper. I mean, there are hundreds of these things. That's the good part. There is no bad part, because for me, this is an ideal way to review shots of flowers, pets, family gatherings, vacations, car shows and much more.

Plus it's fun and it keeps me off the streets. See? Everyone benefits!

So I ask again, how do you store and view your photos? I'm curious. Am I the only one who is this crazy?

-JFT

Saving Face

I get these little pre-cancer growths on my face and scalp. It's the wages, my doc tells me, of allowing myself to get too much sun when I was younger. Right. I think of it as the inevitable result of bring a ranch kid who worked a whole lot out in the alfalfa fields.

My dad, who also was out in the fields, fought almighty battles with skin cancer, eventually losing parts of his nose and ears, along with huge tracts of skin. I've seen what happens when attention to this is not paid. So I pay attention.

Lately I've had a persistent one of these growths. Had it frozen off. It came back. Had it frozen off again. It came back again.

OK, time to get serious.

The doc told me that while the liquid-nitrogen freeze is "the gold standard," when that doesn't work, she prescribes a salve - or she cuts to the chase and cuts the troubled area out.

This time she prescribed a salve - very expensive stuff - that she sez will do the trick. Three applications, on successive days, are required. Thank god for health insurance.

First day, application one: Not much happens, feels like a cool, light, slippery goo.

Second day, application two: Something definitely is happening. When the light, slippery goo comes into contact with the target area, it feels like I've just applied a coating of sulfuric acid.

Third day, application three: To say something is happening is an understatement, like saying that habañeros are hot. When the light slippery goo comes into contact with the target area, if feels like I've just applied nuclear waste that eventually will melt my skull and what little gray matter it contains.

This makes me very happy that three applications are all that have been prescribed, as I have no gray matter to spare.

It's now a week after application one and the crusty, scabby, dried skin that covered the target area after application three did its work has mostly flaked off. This means that I no longer look as though a makeup artist from "Star Wars" has been at work on my forehead in an attempt to make me look reptilian.

I am keeping fingers crossed that this will do the trick. Can't shake the notion, however, that I would have been better off to just allow the doc to wield her scalpel and be done with it. I mean, everything she cuts off could be counted as weight loss, right?

-JFT

 

Ending a Life of Sloth and Indolence

I may have to move myself off my lazy butt. Actually, I already have. Kind of.

Our yard guy didn't come last week. He didn't come the week prior to that, either. So Thursday afternoon I dragged our own mower out of the garage, tipped some fresh gas into it and for the first time in six years, started it up and cut and trimmed the lawn. Kind of just did what I call a "mow-and-blow."

Lemmetellya, it flat kicked my butt. This was the first time I've done this since the summer of 2008. That was when I underwent my first knee replacement. Laura and I reasoned that doing yard work on a brand new knee, in place thanks to major surgery, probably wasn't a good idea, at least for awhile. So we hired the man who does our neighbors' yards to do ours.

My knee recovered beautifully and our new yard man worked so hard and did such a good job that, hell, we just kept him on. Then a couple of years down the line I had a second knee replacement. By now, the thought of letting our yard guy go, even after recovery, given how hard he worked and the pittance he charged, was just - well, not tenable.

But fate will take a hand in things. Our yard guy's son just knocked on our door and told me that his dad is in the hospital, that he wouldn't be coming again this week. Hope the guy will beat whatever ails him, he's a very nice man. But in the meantime, looks like I'm back in the saddle with mowing, trimming and cleaning our yard again, for the first time in six years.

Oh, good, just in time for the enormous sycamore tree next door to drop its 11 zillion dinner-plate-sized leaves all over our house and yard. Ah, well, I can use the exercise.

-JFT