Tag Archives: San Jose Mercury News;

Henry Coe’s Legacy Subject to Lethargy

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Frog Lake Turns out that my favourite State park in California’s South Bay area, the Henry Coe State Park (the largest Californian State Park), is under thread of closure due to budget cuts.

I went there as soon as I heard about this, and inquired. I also did a very nice walk to Frog Lake (if you ever do this hike, walk half way around the lake and sit on the fallen tree. It’s one of the most peaceful spots in the world), then back via Middle Ridge.

Anyway… The rangers were very pleased that someone showed an interest, but no, they don’t have a petition to sign or any other form of activity going, not even information on site on this subject.

Seems like they will be waiting until decisions are firm, also know as it being too late. Is this stupid or what?

I wrote a letter to the San Jose Mercury News; maybe it gets published. Not about their lethargy but about the closure plans of course.

Last Orders!

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DonGiovanniDrinks Funny how the UK is about to lift some restrictions on the pub hours, while others introduce them: In San Jose, California, the town decided to introduce a “soft closing experiment” (to be reviewed after 90 days).

The essence is that pubs, bars and clubs are allowed to stay open one more hour, but not allowed to serve alcoholic beverages during that time.

So, it’s Last Orders for night dwellers in San Jose, although their bell rings at 1.30AM.

According to this article by the San Jose Mercury News, however, it’s not drinking-up time for the people of San Jose: It’s sobering-up time: Officials hope the extended hours will allow people to sober up before getting in their cars.

Amazing what an hour can do if you are a politician.

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Back Home

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SanjoseweatherAah. Back home again. What can I say?

A lot of work, a lot of whales, a lot of sunshine – but I am still glad to be back home and in my own space. No hotel room ever compares to the own home, but I could of course have done with more of the South Bay Area weather. The snippet from the San Jose Mercury News shown here shows a typical 5 day forecast for the area. The week before was the same, except there was a remote possibility of a cloud on Saturday, but I never saw any.

In fact, the weather is so lovely that the Californian wine makers took to harvesting at nighttime. Working through daytime, harvesters get too hot and exhaust too quickly. Also, the grapes are more fragile and start fermenting too soon. Apparently, they started running the harvesting machines at night a while ago. The new development is to do the manual harvest at night, too.

Have a look at this article and photo. Whatever unpleasant memories the manual harvest has for me, nighttime harvest with floodlights and so forth really takes the last little bit of romanticism out.

Speaking of romantism: I watched In Her Shoes last week. I’m a bit of a softie myself, but I found my master: the woman next to me started weeping about 10 minutes into the movie, and was quite deranged by the end of it. Nice little feelgood movie. Not a must-see, though.