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All of those calamities were widely predicted by the opponents of Brexit, yet when it came time to vote, it made no difference. In the memorable words of a leader of the "leave" movement: "People in this country have had enough of experts."
British supporters of Brexit and American supporters of Donald Trump have a lot in common: anti-immigrant prejudice, resentment of indifferent elites, and nostalgia for a less challenging and largely imaginary past. The Brexit issue and the Trump candidacy both provide the seductive opportunity to just say "no" to the crazy-making complexity of modern life. And I think they share something even deeper: the visceral, mindless pleasure of simply smashing something to see what happens – of not stopping to think before you act.
Which brings us to climate change. Refusal to think is the dominant response to climate change by every single developed country around the world. Climate change is, after all, just so complicated. Unfortunately, the consequences of not thinking about climate change will be far more catastrophic than the result of any ill-advised election. Climate change is going to touch everything, from water availability to food supplies to the viability of coastal cities, and it will almost certainly lead to massive human migrations in the coming decades. Our failure to prepare for it guarantees chaos.
Now hold on, some may object: What about President Obama's Clean Power Plan? What about China's commitment to clean energy infrastructure? What about the Paris Agreement, signed in December and described as "the first-ever universal, legally-binding global climate deal"? Isn't this evidence that leaders around the world are taking meaningful action to combat climate change?
These are all positive acts, but none of them represent real action equal to the crisis that is upon us. Obama's Clean Power Plan, rolled out to howls of protest and multiple lawsuits from pro-business groups and many states, requires no implementation until 2020 at the earliest. It is also depressingly unambitious.
For example, the plan anticipates that 27 percent of the nation's power will still come from coal by 2030, and its goals for renewable energy lag behind many current state mandates. Meanwhile, China, despite its clean-energy investments, still gets more than 60 percent of its energy from coal, and is not projected to reduce total coal consumption significantly for decades. As for the Paris Agreement, it specifies no new explicit emissions targets for individual countries and contains no enforceable mechanisms to assure accountability. No climate change expert seriously believes the agreement will meet its target of keeping the global temperature increase to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Our efforts to prepare for climate change are even weaker than our efforts to prevent it. Due to the tremendous inertia of the atmosphere, it is already too late to prevent many of the negative effects of climate change. In just about every variable, from temperature increases to ice disappearance, and from sea level rise to the spread of tropical diseases, the world is changing faster than predicted, approaching worst-case scenarios.
Nothing less than a coordinated global response to global warming's unavoidable and tremendously disruptive effects is required. Instead, politicians bury their heads in the sand. The highly vulnerable coastal states of North Carolina and Florida have actually banned official mention of climate change, because that might be bad for business.
Life used to be so much simpler in so many ways. We used to be able to do anything we wanted to the environment. We could dump anything into the water and the air. We could cut trees without limit and catch all the fish our nets could hold. The world seemed a stable, predictable place as the seasons followed their reliable rhythms, and nobody thought the mountains would ever lose their snow or that the oceans would rise.
Our new reality, with its constant and unpredictable change, is disturbing. It is exhausting to have to listen to the endless warnings of experts. If only we could just vote to exit, and leave behind all the hassles imposed upon us by living on a finite planet. I fear that future generations will look back on these years, and ask: What were they thinking? And the only possible answer is: We weren't.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. He is a biologist in Oregon.]]>
Such as this late afternoon light, striking golden against the eastern slope of the canyon, bringing the polished trunks of the madrones to a fine glow. I stop to savor the aesthetic thrill of a harmonious landscape. How wonderful to be carefree in nature!
Around the end of a log hops a small bird. It does not react to my motionless form, less than 20 feet away. I cautiously raise binoculars to satisfy my curiosity, and see it is a young hermit thrush in ragged late-summer plumage, its patchy face wearing the naïve and slightly desperate expression of a college freshman trying to make his way across an unfamiliar campus.
Obscurely moved by the bird, I impulsively decide to renounce, for this one encounter, my position as the dominant species. I will wait, motionless and silent, for the thrush to do what it wishes until it leaves the scene on its own terms, and in its own time. It is 5:59 p.m.
White, male, American, and by any rational standard rich, I perch atop a global pinnacle of privilege. It is both very comfortable and very uncomfortable, though mostly comfortable. The privilege I enjoy, though, is just in relation to my fellow humans. Beyond white privilege, male privilege, or the privilege inherent in being born in America, is an even deeper and less acknowledged boon -- human privilege.
The thrush hops about in the scurf of Douglas-fir needles and dust at the edge of the trail, scratching with both feet and twice lunging forward to seize something I can't see. At 6:04, it crosses the path, and settles beneath that arching cover of a snowberry bush. It fluffs its feathers for comfort and falls into motionlessness. The canyon is silent, but for a slight trickle of water from the drying creek and the soughing of wind through the trees. Time passes.
At 6:08, the thrush gives a small shake and leaps up into the snowberry. It gives its first call, a single chup, and then at 6:10 flies back to the path, where it resumes its quiet foraging. It finds nothing, and at 6:12 flies about 20 feet upslope into a small dogwood, where it gives a series of calls, accompanied by wing-flips. I risk a look with my binoculars; the thrush shows no reaction to my slight movement, but continues to call and flip his wings. The motions resemble food begging by a fledgling. Perhaps this youth, hungry and alone, is calling to his parents, nowhere to be found.
At 6:14, the thrush flies to the path behind me, less than 15 feet away. It shows no awareness of my presence, and after a minute of foraging, flies out of sight down the creek. For 16 minutes, I had put aside human privilege. It felt like a long time. It wasn't. But it gave me a more intimate encounter with another species than I have had for a very long time.
Years ago, I lived in the South American rainforest, doing graduate research. The remote reserve was still home to all its wild beasts, including jaguars. Attacks by jaguars on humans are almost unheard-of, and yet jaguars are definitely capable of killing a person. I encountered the animals eight times. One of those encounters was face-to-face. For those few seconds I lived utterly without human privilege, forever changing my place in the world.
Most of us have never lived in a landscape with large predators. Most have never experienced nature as anything worse than an inconvenient blizzard, a drought that killed the landscaping, a windstorm that knocked out the power. We have lived like kings, and like kings, we never questioned the justice of our privileges.
Monarchies are overthrown, and empires fall. No single species can forever appropriate all the resources of the world for its own. It is likely that climate chaos, acting through epidemics, agricultural collapse, or migration-fueled wars, will end human privilege, if not planetary domination, by the end of this century.
As individuals, there is only so much we can do to prepare.
But here's one thing I'm going to try -- to practice living without human privilege for a few minutes a week. Let the world be. Watch what happens. Repeat.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column service of High Country News. He lives and writes in Oregon.]]>
Poverty and overpopulation are still with us, of course, but sadly, such bold ideas to solve these problems are in short supply today. Meanwhile, the world's current level of 7 billion is straining resources to the limit. Certainly the earth cannot support in health and comfort the 9 billion expected to swarm upon its surface by mid-century. Action must be taken -- immediate, forceful action -- to reduce the human population and re-balance the planet before it is too late. No person of good conscience can view televised scenes of squalor in the teeming cities of Africa and Asia -- and even, if reports are to be believed, in parts of our own country -- without feeling called upon to make a difference.
Fortunately, thanks to the generative genius of capitalism, the fossil fuel industry is positioned to solve this problem, while simultaneously generating good-paying jobs and unimaginable amounts of money. The release of greenhouse gases by this industry has already set the world on a trajectory toward irreversible climate change, which will ultimately bring about the population readjustment that all thinking people wish for. And companies from ExxonMobil to BP to Koch Industries to Syncrude stand ready to do so much more.
However, through no fault of their own, these corporations have not been as effective as they might be. Last year, barely over a million acres of new oil and gas leases were sold on America's public lands, and the industry was forced to make due with only $18.5 billion in government subsidies. Meanwhile, endless red tape has imposed restrictive regulations on emissions, delayed the construction of essential pipelines like the Keystone XL, and waged a pitiless War on Coal. President Obama even signed an emissions-reducing deal with China. It is obvious to all sensible people that this is going in exactly the wrong direction.
My modest proposal is simply this: Set the fossil fuel industry free. Open the valves fully on greenhouse gas emissions. The near-term profits will be immense. In the slightly longer term (after most of our generation are safely off the stage), this plan will produce a bracing readjustment of earth's ecological systems, resulting in much-needed population reduction through droughts, crop failures, and coastal inundation. And don't worry about your children or grandchildren. Surely the wealth they inherit will insulate them from whatever unpleasantness may come in the overpopulated parts of the world.
I acknowledge that there are a few misguided individuals who will urge a different course. They fancifully suggest that carbon emissions be immediately and drastically reduced, with the goal of keeping atmospheric CO2 below 450 parts per million. This is the threshold that international climate negotiators have identified as providing a 50 percent chance of avoiding the impacts of catastrophic climate change. The level is almost 400 ppm today. To keep it below 450 ppm would cost the fossil fuel industry the equivalent of $28 trillion in revenues over the next two decades, according to published estimates. The only possible response to such an idea is a hearty laugh. When in the history of the world have corporations or governments passed up such wealth?
Nothing makes me angrier than those self-righteous "greens," who profess to love the earth, but who do nothing but fiddle about with this little regulation here, that little lawsuit there, and never talk about population at all. To use a well-worn phrase, they are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I say, aim the Titanic straight at that rapidly melting iceberg! Throw more coal into the boilers! Full steam ahead! The earth will thank us. Eventually.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column service of High Country News (hcn.org). A writer and naturalist, he is co-author of Shifting Patterns: Meditations on Climate Change in Southern Oregon's Rogue Valley (www.shiftingpatterns.org). He lives in Ashland, Oregon.]]>
In times like these, we need both the perspective and renewal of energy to be gained from nature's teaching. Many famous fables feature the attributes of animals we may never see in person: the courage of the lion, the memory of the elephant, the teamwork of the wolf pack. But in truth, we need look no farther than our backyards to gain instruction from nature. Here are 10 valuable lessons I have learned from a species so familiar that we take it for granted: the American robin.
1. It's good to be common
The American robin is one of the most common and widespread native birds in North America. Their large population gives robins great resilience in the face of ecological and climatic challenges.
Build the movement.
2. Adapt to where you are
Robins are found from steamy Southern swamps to the Alaskan tundra. Their remarkable ability to adapt to local conditions and resources is the secret of their success.
Tailor your message and manner to local conditions.
3. And also have one special skill
For all their adaptability, robins also have a unique and specialized skill: their earthworm-hunting behavior, which opens up a rich resource few other birds exploit.
Know your special talent and make the most of it.
4. Figure out how to take advantage of the dominant paradigm
Robins thrive in part because of their ability to make the most of human environments, nesting in our backyards and foraging on our lawns.
Don't be afraid to make alliances and to engage with mass media.
5. Be alert for phonies
Robins are among the few birds able to detect and toss out the eggs of the parasitic brown-headed cowbird, thus protecting their nests from invaders.
Welcome only those who truly share your values.
6. Know when to move on
Throughout their wide range, robins exhibit facultative migration – that is, they adjust their winter residency to specific conditions. In a cold winter, they head south; if the next year is mild, they may remain resident all year.
Know when to stage a tactical retreat, in order to win another time.
7. Encourage the young
Robins often produce two broods of offspring per year. That gives them a huge advantage over less-fecund species.
There's no substitute for the energy and idealism of the young when building a movement.
8. Be confident
Robins are often described as "bold," "confident," and "confiding," in contrast to related birds like the shy varied thrush. There is no doubt that the outgoing behavior of robins has contributed greatly to their success.
Believe in your cause whole-heartedly, and others will, too.
9. Be friendly
In addition to their boldness, robins appeal to us because they're friendly – even if they're keeping us company in the garden simply in order to snatch up earthworms.
A friendly, positive approach will gain many more listeners than one wrapped in doom and gloom.
10. Sing!
For many of us, the rich warbling song of the robin announces the arrival of spring, lifting our spirits after the hard winter. Isn't a beautiful message what we all want to hear?
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column service of High Country News. He is a biologist and writer in Oregon.]]>
There's no question that far too many people in this country struggle to make ends meet. Still, many of us are lucky enough to live comfortably. We go through our days dealing with "first-world problems" – fender-benders, delayed airplane flights, slow Internet connections – all the while feeling in our bones that bad times are coming. And so we're irresistibly drawn to dystopian books and movies, obsessed by what might be over the horizon. Judging by what we watch and read, we're worried about three things: environmental collapse, corporate/technocratic domination, and zombies. Especially zombies. So let's start there.
Zombies are the monsters of the moment because they're … us. Awkwardly lurching, oblivious to their surroundings, incapable of human connection, always searching, never satisfied –– does this sound like any Bluetooth-wearing, text-messaging, video-game-playing, Web-surfing person you know? The proliferation of zombie movies and TV shows reflects our anxiety about ourselves and what we are becoming. In this brave new cyber-world, we wield untold forces of information. But are we losing our skills as human beings? What do you think? Hello? Hello?
Meanwhile, movies as diverse as The Bourne Identity, The Hunger Games and the new release Divergent imagine a world in which shadowy figures control the levers of power, and the rest of us dance to a tune we aren't even allowed to hear. A world, you could say, just like the one we live in. It's hard to argue with that, given our everyday reality of pervasive electronic surveillance, assassination-by-drone and corporations "too big to fail."
Finally, we play out our fears of a dystopian future with visions of environmental collapse. During the height of the Cold War, apocalyptic movies like On the Beach, Fail-Safe and even (spoiler alert) Planet of the Apes imagined a world laid waste by nuclear war. How old-fashioned! These days, we're much more worried that tomorrow's apocalypse will be environmental, either due to climate change, as in movies like The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, or through pandemics brought on by our meddling with the natural world, as in Contagion and I Am Legend. The trend is even clearer in books: A recent search on Amazon.com for "climate change fiction" returned 650 results; my favorite title was Hot Mess: Speculative Fiction about Climate Change.
The latest studies from the National Academy of Sciences predict a temperature increase of 4.7-8.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century if the current rate of emissions continues, and conclude: "If emissions of CO2 stopped altogether … surface temperatures would stay elevated for at least a thousand years, implying extremely long-term commitment to a warmer planet due to past and current emissions. ..."
I'm convinced that the world to come will look terribly damaged to me. But I don't want to live in dread of the future. I want to feel grateful for the blessings of my life. I want to believe in utopia as well as dystopia.
In this matter, as in so many other problems that defy a logical solution, I find an answer in poetry. The great English poet William Blake wrote,
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
The Japanese haiku master Issa
gave us:
This world
is a dewdrop world
yes … but. …
The flower, even if it's just a weed in a vacant lot, gives us beauty, a vision of heaven. The dewdrop may seem small and fleeting, but within it the world is contained and preserved. In the worst, most damaged corners of the planet, from the slums of Calcutta to the industrial wastelands of Detroit, I have found beauty. Amid all my fears about a dystopian future, I have one certainty: There will still be beauty. And there, in that small infinity, in that brief eternity, utopia will abide, waiting to be found.]]>
Lately, I've come to believe that humanity's poor time-depth perception explains our lack of environmental coordination. Basing all our plans on a paltry few decades of experience -- or at most a century or two of records -- we ignore the clear lessons of the deep past and insist on building and rebuilding in floodplains and fire-prone forests. We dam rivers and drain wetlands with little thought for the long-term consequences. We eliminate enormous populations of passenger pigeons and bison, overfish stock after stock, and still are stunned each time it happens again.
There's no question that time has depth. Planet Earth is billions of years old. Events like the advance and retreat of ice sheets are so brief that they hardly register on the geological time scale, which is measured in eons and eras, each many millions of years long. By comparison, the Earth's spatial dimensions are trivial. I will never climb Mount Everest, but on my Saturday hikes I often average five and a half miles, which is about the height of that highest peak above sea level. I just have to imagine going up a mountain, instead of across a landscape. Plus, we have plenty of other tools at our disposal -- cars and ships and airplanes -- that allow us to take the measure of the world, to travel to its remotest corners.
By contrast, our experience of time can't be mechanically enhanced. It is simply gained the painful and old-fashioned way: by getting older, day by day and year by year. Of course, we can improve our time-depth perception by using science and imagination. The insights into the history of the Earth provided by geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology are amazing.
It has been millions of years since dinosaurs walked the Earth, but every child holds a vivid imaginative picture of those incredible creatures, thanks to the painstaking work of scientists. And yet, how little thought do we grownups spare for our planet's past!
Against all evidence, we believe that the world we grew up with is the norm, and that any changes we notice are mere temporary fluctuations in the status quo that will pass. This belief in a stable natural world has never been less accurate -- or more dangerous -- than it is today. Climate scientists and ecologists have no doubt that climate change, or, more aptly, climate chaos, will transform the planet's habitats in the coming decades. But they have surprisingly little confidence in their ability to predict what the world to come will be like. Indeed, climate change ecologists commonly use an ominous-sounding term: "the no-analog future." That is, they believe that the future world will resemble nothing that we've ever seen before.
This is in sharp contrast to how most of us picture the future. To the extent that we accept the likelihood of any climate-driven changes at all, we expect simple northward shifts of the habitats we know. Let's say temperatures in San Francisco will come to resemble those in Southern California today. Well, then, we expect that the plant life of the Bay Area will become more like that around Los Angeles.
Unfortunately for this orderly picture, studies of past environments suggest that major climate changes shuffle species into new and unpredictable arrangements. The associations that seem so natural and permanent today, say, between pines and oaks in the California foothills, or between sagebrush and juniper in the Great Basin, may fall apart in the future. What new arrangements will come … well, if we think we know, we are kidding ourselves. To prepare for this chaotic future world, the best we can do is to try to slow the pace of climate change and preserve as many species as we can, to give nature a chance to adapt with as little dislocation as possible.
Back in elementary school, when my depth perception finally started to improve, I figured out that to catch that pop fly, I had to keep my eye on the ball and move to where it was going to come down. As environmental changes come hard and fast, will we be able to do something similar -- anticipate and adapt and keep our eye on the rapidly moving ball? Let's hope so, because our very future will depend on our depth perception -- of time.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. He is a biologist and writer who lives in Ashland, Oregon.]]>
This weekend, I was finally able to get out into the Oregon springtime after several weeks of travel. As an avid birder, I was curious to see what birds had arrived in my absence, but first, I needed to make sure that I hadn't missed the shooting stars. No; there they were, at the peak of their splendor.
This splendor is intense, but intimate. Shooting stars do not create gaudy displays like the bluebonnets in Texas or poppies in the California foothills. They do not paint whole hillsides with color. You can only perceive them by standing among them, and they are best appreciated from just a few inches away, preferably while you're lying on your belly in the spring sunshine. I spent a few hours doing just that, lying among the flowers, listening to the ardent trilling of the chorus frogs in the stock pond down the hill and the scissoring calls of hungry swallows streaking over my head. As time passed, it gradually became real to me that I was home again, back in place.
By a marvelous coincidence, this same late-April weekend marked the peak of the Lyrid meteor shower. So, in the middle of the night, I again found myself lying down outside, on my back this time. Again I was looking at shooting stars, but these were miles, not inches, away; astronomical, not botanical. Seemingly utterly different, both kinds of shooting stars had these things in common: they demanded my full attention, they were beautiful, and they were brief.
The trip I had just returned from was a natural history cruise in South America, with me as one of the naturalists. Lying in the dark, waiting for the next shooting star, I had the leisure to reflect on that rather odd role, the official naturalist. What did my tour members expect from me, and did I succeed in providing it? The paying customers expected a high degree of expertise, of course. Indeed, they often assumed an entirely implausible degree of expertise – as if, faced with the staggering and frequently uncatalogued diversity of the Amazon, we could identify every blossom, butterfly and bird call. They also expected not to be bored; professional naturalists need to be entertaining as well as informative. All this was well understood, and I think my colleagues and I successfully met our passengers' expectations.
But as another meteor flashed across the sky, I saw my role as a naturalist in a different light. Informing and entertaining people are means, not ends –– means toward something more fundamental. What do we owe the natural world that sustains us? The response that I encourage is simply gratitude. And the most basic expression of gratitude is to be mindful of the gift: to pay attention.
We all inhabit routines, routines that add up to our lives, but paradoxically take us out of the actual moments we live in. Travel dislocates those routines, and in that dislocation lies a chance to see more clearly. As a naturalist, my goal is to make the most of this opportunity and encourage people to look at some extraordinary natural thing with intensity and focus. Precisely what they choose to see is up to them, but I can help by pointing out the beauty and fascination that surrounds us.
The shooting star streaking across the sky has spent unimaginable eons drifting as a cinder in space. Its visible existence, when it interacts with other matter, lies in that split second of time as it flares across our sky, and then is gone. The shooting stars that flower beneath the oaks come and go each year, each visible only for a few days, and only seen by those who look.
And so, here is the single most important word I ever say as a naturalist. I have spoken this word in response to anteaters in the Amazon and icebergs in Antarctica, and now, inspired by Oregon shooting stars, I offer it to you: "Look!"
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a biologist and writer in Ashland, Oregon.]]>
At the same time, I enjoy melancholy, and autumn is my favorite season. Yet, before I embrace that dark, I need one day of perfect light, light reflected off a forest of brilliant autumn leaves. This can't be found in my town, where the dominant hardwoods are oaks, whose leaves turn, at best, a somber orange-brown, and where the blazing color of the occasional non-native sugar maple or box elder seems garish and forced. So on a weekend near my birthday, I point my battered Subaru up the Crater Lake Highway, higher and higher, past the last town, past the last dam, into the towering, almost black conifer forests, where the Rogue River runs cold.
For about 50 weeks of the year, this great mountain forest of Douglas-fir, hemlock, and pine is dark green, a place of shadows, large silences and puritanical sobriety. But sometime in October, all is changed, and the huge trees seem to step back as the humble hazels and maples at their feet begin to glow, and glow brighter, and finally blaze with the intimate incandescence of candle flame, until the mountains are filled with a light unlike any other -- warming, piercing, purifying and breathtaking. This is the light I come to seek.
A trail runs along the river here, and this is the route of my pilgrimage. A hundred feet back into the forest, the sun-loving little hardwoods are shaded out, surrendering the spongy ground to mushrooms and deep-forest herbs like vanilla-leaf and pipsissewa. There, the dark conifers remain in shadow. But in this brief season, they merely provide a black backdrop to the brilliance of the hazelnuts and vine maples that line the riverbanks, spreading their leaves in the sun that fed them all summer long, and now illuminates their dying glory.
The hazelnuts grow in dense thickets, and are so beloved by the squirrels that in all my years of hiking through their groves, I have only found a handful of their nuts. It is a mystery how they replace themselves. Their autumn leaves are delicate, first turning a subtle yellow-green, and at their peak attaining a yellow whose translucent pale purity rinses the air with cleansing light.
Vine maples are far more flamboyant. Even as they begin to turn, their star-shaped leaves glow a deep golden yellow, and with the advance of frosty nights, they flame into scarlet, a color the hazels never dare to attempt. The brightest maples always seem to be at the water's edge, where their colors are stirred by the restless river, a fluid rainbow carried away past the towering conifers, which appear to lean forward for a better look, but say nothing.
I walk through these wonders wide-eyed, and as I breathe, I feel nourished by the light, literally fed until my stomach grows full, electrified until I tingle to my fingertips. This magic never fails, a gift of nature as reliable as the turning of the earth itself. After my day in the forest of light, I return homeward strengthened and prepared: ready for another year, ready for winter, ready for the night.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News(hcn.org). He is a biologist and writer in Ashland, Oregon.
Sharp environmental contrasts, through both time and space, have always been a feature of life in the Great Basin. We know this because the region's arid conditions that make living here a challenge are also ideal for preserving the remains of past life.
In lake sediments, packrat stockpiles and even in exquisitely air-dried human dung (coprolites), ecological change has been revealed by the painstaking work of geologists, paleontologists and archeologists. That knowledge has recently been synthesized in a masterful book, The Great Basin: A Natural Prehistory, by Donald K. Grayson of the University of Washington, and it's required reading for anyone interested in the West.
The most dramatic changes in the Great Basin over the past 100,000 years are the appearance and disappearance of lakes. The Great Basin is comprised of many lesser basins that are connected to some degree, but which have no outlet. In the late Pleistocene, about 15,000 years ago, the Great Basin was a labyrinth of lakes, covering almost 28 million acres by Grayson's calculation. The largest of these, Lake Bonneville, was almost the size of Lake Michigan and reached depths well over 1,000 feet. Its shriveled remnant is the Great Salt Lake.
Summer Lake, too, was part of a much larger Pleistocene lake, called Lake Chewaucan, which covered 480 square miles and reached a depth of 375 feet. At its springtime maximum these days, Summer Lake is lucky to cover 70 square miles at a maximum depth of three feet. By late summer, the lake has retreated to a puddle, a thin dark smudge almost lost in the heat waves.
The Pleistocene lakes existed when the continental ice sheets deflected the jet stream southward. This brought both high precipitation and cool temperatures, which together filled the basins of the Great Basin. In contrast, the greatest retreat of Great Basin lakes occurred during a period of high temperatures and drought sometimes called the Altithermal, from about 7,500-4,500 years ago. The causes for this climatic shift in the middle Holocene are not well understood, and its effects were not equally severe everywhere. Nevertheless, the implications for the future of the region are sobering.
The Altithermal appears to have been characterized by temperatures 5-15 degrees higher than today; in other words, within the range of predicted Great Basin temperatures by the end of this century. And what were the effects of these temperatures? Many Great Basin lakes and marshes virtually disappeared. The frequency of fires increased, as shown by studies near Lake Tahoe. A variety of mammals associated with sagebrush were replaced by species adapted to drought-tolerant saltbush. The hardy woodrats, whose middens are such a reliable source of data on environmental conditions, disappeared from many sites, to return only after the end of the drought.
Even those most adaptable of creatures, human beings, suffered population declines during the Altithermal. Those who survived were forced to adapt to a diet heavy in small seeds that were extremely labor-intensive to gather and process, and we know this from their, um, coprolites. All in all, Grayson singles out the Altithermal as the least hospitable time for humans in the Great Basin over the past 10,000 years.
This bad time seems to be returning. And the challenges ahead will not be due to climate change alone. Human population density in the Great Basin is far greater than it has ever been, with major cities in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Reno. These urban populations, especially those in Las Vegas, rely on water sources that may not last the century, and most rural residents also depend on readily available water for farming and ranching. It is hard to imagine how these populations can be sustained in the face of conditions approaching those of the Altithermal.
The dry bed, or playa, of Summer Lake, has a stark beauty. Every evening, our group gathers on its salty edge to watch the shadow of Winter Ridge roll smoothly across it as the sun sets. The history of the Great Basin assures us that this lake will be brim-full again -- in a thousand, or 10,000 years. But that is cold comfort for the hot days ahead.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is naturalist and writer from Ashland, Oregon, who wrote this piece during a residency at Playa, a retreat center for artists, writers and scientists on the shores of Oregon's Summer Lake.]]>
Distant from population centers and major military installations, and likely spared nuclear fallout borne on the westerly winds, this seemed like a good place to escape the world's madness. At about that same time, in the 1970s, the wider region stretching from Northern California to British Columbia was re-imagined as "Ecotopia," by writers and environmental activists.
This has remained a durable image of the Pacific Northwest. We like to think of ourselves as apart, as removed from the social and political frenzies, the soul-crushing sprawl, and the environmental degradation that afflict much of America. It's true that to retain this vision we have had to switch to stronger and stronger prescriptions for our rose-colored glasses, but on a good day it is still possible to believe that we are somehow beyond the reach of the world's troubles.
Well, this summer the world came to call. On June 5, the largest piece of debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami to reach American shores washed up on lovely Agate Beach just north of Newport, Ore. This floating dock, 65 feet long and weighing over 150 tons, was, in effect, a biological bomb. At least 2 tons of its weight was made up of the bodies of living plants and animals -- more than 90 species and many of them not native to this side of the Pacific. Two of these species set off particularly shrill alarm bells for marine biologists: the North Pacific starfish and Wakame kelp. Both are on the Global Invasive Species Database list of the world's 100 most dangerous invasive species. They pose a serious threat to the rich and productive ecosystems of our Pacific Coast.
In the days immediately following the arrival of the floating dock, state biologists worked feverishly to scrape down the hulk, burying the removed plants and animals under eight feet of dry sand and then going over the cleaned surface with blowtorches. The state rushed through a contract of over $84,000 to have the dock dismantled and removed overland, to prevent possible further spread of invasive organisms. Only time will tell if these herculean efforts were successful. A single female North Pacific starfish, for example, can produce 20 million eggs, and the larvae are almost impossible to detect as they disperse in plankton.
Meanwhile, I woke up this weekend to smoky skies hazing the valley. That instant stab of dread -- a wildfire in the surrounding mountains? Despite our relatively wet spring and cool summer, fire is always a fear here. Ten years ago, we spent weeks in the smoke of the 500,000-acre Biscuit Fire that burned across the Kalmiopsis Wilderness, 50 miles to the west of us. But a bit of checking on the Internet quickly revealed that this smoke was from much farther West; in fact, it was from Siberia. Some 5,000 miles from my hillside in Oregon, out-of-control forest fires are burning.
The Siberian smoke isn't thick, although it can make life difficult for people with asthma. Its most obvious effect is that it produces beautiful sunsets. At least that means you can see it -- and I, for one, prefer that the pollution I'm exposed to is visible. Most of it, of course, is not. The industrial pollution that now routinely drifts across the Pacific from the factory chimneys of China and India contributes up to 20 percent of the ozone measured at West Coast cities. L
ast spring, measurements at the peak of Mount Bachelor, one of the Cascade Mountains' pristine snow-covered volcanoes, found ozone levels higher than in downtown Los Angeles -- carried on the jet stream from China. Other studies have concluded that 20 percent of the mercury in Oregon's Willamette River comes from the deposition of air pollution originating in Asia.
Today, the winds have changed, and the skies of southern Oregon are again a brilliant blue. The conifer forests are dark green, and the wild Rogue River runs cold and clear. But every breath I take contains some ozone from China, and somewhere out at sea, another hunk of tsunami debris is approaching, bearing invasive species from the other side of the world. We all breathe the same atmosphere, and the waters of one great, interconnected ocean break on all of our shores. This is one planet, after all, and there is no escaping our common troubles, even in Ecotopia.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He writes in Ashland, Oregon.]]>
Onward we flew, ever eastward, and soon we were over ... nothing. Southeastern Oregon is about as much nothing as you can find in the Lower 48 these days. From 30,000 feet, it was an unlovely dun-colored expanse, sparsely smudged with vegetation and dissected by unremarkable canyons, its main feature a series of alkali lakes that not even a panoramic aerial view could render inviting. Every so often a dirt road made a long pale scratch, and I could be sure that there were cows down there somewhere, but the hand of man was remarkably just about absent. The reason was obvious: This place is worthless.
There used to be lots of worthless places in the West, left high and dry as the rivers of money rushed past, headed for California. There were areas like the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, the frozen alpine peaks of Colorado, the sun-baked valleys of Nevada, the cold, dry basins of Wyoming. Or, as they are now more familiarly known: Phoenix and Tucson, Aspen and Vail, Las Vegas, and the coalfields of the Powder River Basin. Worthlessness can be a remarkably temporary condition.
It is an oft-repeated saying among conservationists that people will protect only what they value. Well, yes, that's true. But this maxim, in its unqualified simplicity, fails to acknowledge two enormous considerations. First, "value" is relative. As residents of Wyoming will tell you, the traditional values of ranching and hunting are deeply and truly held in that state, but they have been powerless to prevent the destruction of both of them by energy development, an even higher value in the eyes (and bank accounts) of many. Second, the truism ignores the protective power of worthlessness. I have come to the sad conclusion that genuine worthlessness provides the only lasting protection that most wild country can hope for in the 21st century. Worthless land may be neglected, it may be casually abused, but it will not be utterly destroyed. Utter destruction takes money, and who wastes money on worthless land? Now, I'm certain some will object to my paradoxical glorification of worthlessness. Surely our most valued wild places are permanently protected by law; for example, our beloved national parks. It is inconceivable that Yosemite or Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon could be destroyed by development ... isn't it?
Perhaps. These treasured landscapes have relatively firm legal standing and legions of passionate defenders, and are secure at the moment. What about 20 years from now? That is merely an eye-blink in the timeframe of protection these places need and deserve. Twenty years further toward the end of oil, how will society value the uranium around the Grand Canyon, the geothermal riches of Yellowstone, the solar resources of Death Valley? Value is relative, and the value of energy will become almost unlimited as it grows ever more scarce.
Consider the orgy of destruction already being accepted in the name of energy extraction: hydrologic fracturing that threatens water supplies, tar sands development that is destroying huge areas of Canada's boreal forest, mountaintop removal that is reducing Appalachia to rubble. Can anyone believe that the oil endgame will not involve the pursuit of every last barrel, no matter what the consequences? It is not a metaphor to call this an addiction. In their desperation for a fix, junkies destroy what they once most valued: their homes, their families, their own physical and mental health. Will energy-addicted America behave any differently?
I haven't just flown over southeastern Oregon. I have stood on the ground there in spring, in that great solitude, breathing in the perfume of the sagebrush, resting my eyes on the wildflowers that cover the ground, listening to the warbles and trills of a sage thrasher pouring out his heart in the morning light. I have no deeper wish than that this land remains forever what it is today: empty, and worthless, and wild.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a biologist and writer in Ashland, Oregon.]]>
Today, as my 50s draw toward a close, I somehow find myself with a lot more sympathy for old-timers. I admit that recollections can be boring. And yet, as a naturalist, I spend a lot of time encouraging people to imagine the natural world as it once was and perhaps could be again -- healthy, wild and whole. But to really do that right, we need time machines.
Fortunately, time-machine tickets are available throughout the West, offered for the price of a few days' drive. The most well-known is probably Yellowstone National Park, where herds of bison and elk, the howling wolves and the bubbling mud pools transport us back to a world that we can imagine is unchanged since the Pleistocene.
The awe-inspiring abundance of wild America also survives in more humble surroundings. Take Kearney, Neb., for instance. A typical Great Plains small town, its grain silos and fast food restaurants caught in a web of highways and power lines, Kearney seems an unlikely place for transcendence. But it can be found here every spring, just a few miles out of town.
Every March, the largest concentration of sandhill cranes in the world crowds into a 30-mile stretch of the Platte River. They come here to fatten up for a few weeks on waste corn before resuming their journey to tundra breeding grounds that range from Canada to eastern Siberia.
One crane, all by itself, makes the world wild. What bird can match its dignity and calm deliberation, so powerfully matched with its thrilling call and the ecstatic abandon of its mating dances? That wildness, joined in flocks of tens of thousands, in turn gathered into a multitude that can reach half a million birds, tears aside the curtains that enclose our everyday lives, and sends us back to a time that, left to ourselves, we could never imagine.
My fellow time-travelers and I arrived at the Rowe Sanctuary on the Platte River in the late afternoon, while the cranes were still scattered across the harvested fields. Our observation blind was perched above a series of sandbars that are regularly scraped clean by the stewards of the sanctuary, doing the work of nature in these days of depleted river flows. The sandbars offer safe roosting places for the cranes, but only if they are free of entangling vegetation.
Paradoxically, it takes endless care to maintain wildness in the modern world. But it can be done: The Nebraska cranes teach us that.
The sunset was one of the most extraordinary I have ever seen, painting the horizon gold, then apricot and lavender. On cue, the cranes began to gather, filling the world with an extraordinary music. And what is the sound of this sonata for 50,000 cranes? It lacks melody. It lacks harmony. It is a bugle, it is the croak of a frog, it is a slow ripping of canvas, it builds, it gathers, it is a lamentation, an ecstasy, a roar. It pressed us to the earth, speechless.
Finally, the color drained from the sky, and the birds began to crowd the sandbars, forming billowing groves of cranes. By last light, they were a solid forest, grown to fill the shallows between the islands, their toes rooted in the moving river, their crowns tossed by the wind in their blood. Above the Platte, the Big Dipper stood upright on its tail, as if it had spilled out this flood of life.
We walked back to the buses in silence, very different from the excited chatter of our outward hike. The night sky became the color of iron, an iron bell that continued to resound in the darkness, with the echo of a world that only our short memory calls ancient, that only our self-regard finds astonishing.
There is an age-old phenomenon that has recently acquired a name --"shifting baselines." This describes the natural tendency of each generation to accept the world they inhabit as normal, as the baseline against which change is to be measured. In terms of nature, this means that the character of wildness in the land, or the abundance of wildlife in our lives, once lost, is not missed -- cannot be missed -- by those who have never experienced it.
As an antidote, I offer this: Go to Yellowstone or Nebraska in the spring, to your local national wildlife refuge in the fall. Jump in your nearest time machine, and go.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a biologist and writer in Ashland, Oregon]]>
But on one day a year, Birdathon Day, all that changes. Birdathons are competitions to see who can record the most species in a 24-hour period. Ours is held at the height of spring migration, with teams fanning out across this corner of southern Oregon. It's all for a good cause; we raise money for the educational programs of the local Rogue Valley Audubon Society. But the altruism ends there. This is birding stripped to its essence -- fast, hard and wild. If my team, the Falcons, had a theme song, it would be "Bat out of Hell." I know, I know, taxonomically inappropriate, but "Freebird" is way too mellow.
Don't get the idea that anything goes. Like any sport, the Birdathon is governed by rules both inflexible and obscure. For example, though it is not necessary to actually see a bird in order to count it -- most, indeed, are only heard -- two team members must confirm all identifications. All sightings must also be within our county, though this doesn't cramp our style too much because Jackson County is almost twice the size of Rhode Island. Finally, only birds native or naturalized in North America are acceptable.
This caused a heated controversy one year when we spotted an emu, the ostrich-like flightless bird of Australia, happily grazing in a riverside meadow. To my lasting bitterness, this bird was disqualified, even though it was living free and would probably never be recaptured by the emu farm down the road.
The Birdathon starts not at midnight but at 6 p.m., in order to accommodate the beer-fueled list-compilation and pizza party that begins 24 hours later. The four-man Falcons team (only once did we convince a woman to join us, and for some reason she didn't volunteer again) piles into our battered rig, and we head for the mountains. The evening's goal is to score as many high-elevation specialties as possible before nightfall and then to do a couple of hours hooting for owls before grabbing a few hours sleep and heading out again at 3 a.m. Then it's more work for our expert owl hooter (every serious team has one of these indispensable specialists to lure owls) until first light at about 5 a.m., when all our attention switches to taking maximum advantage of the dawn chorus.
The route taken by each team is a closely held secret, honed over years of experience. The Falcons even have a few spots where we merely need to slow the car, roll down the window and score a highly local bird, after which we spray gravel and return to speed. A well-constructed route with minimum unproductive travel is the key to Birdathon victory and all the glory that it brings.
Yes, I have known that glory. The Falcons are the holder of the one-day county record, ticking off 152 species in 2008. But luck in birding, as in life, is a fickle mistress. This year the Falcons were dethroned by a team called the Great Grays, until now the Bad News Bears of southern Oregon's high-stakes birding. As the ancient Greeks said, never count a man happy until the end of his days.
That was just last week, and the wounds are beginning to heal. Today, I returned to my normal birding ways, walking with a friend along the creek near my house. Standing for an hour in one spot in a grove of willows, we watched half a dozen species of jewel-like warblers weave through the fresh green leaves, and I thought about their amazing journeys between the boreal forests of Canada and the jungles of Mexico.
I also heard the distinctive squeak and bubble of cowbirds and explained how they never care for their young, but lay their eggs in the nests of hapless "hosts." A chickadee flew by with fluff to line his nest cavity high in a snag, and I felt boundless respect for the resilience of this tiny bird, survivor of our hard and leafless winters.
Once a year, fast is fun. But on every other day, let my birding be slow.]]>
My house sits at about 2,300 feet in the foothills of Oregon's Siskiyou Mountains. Over the 15 years I've lived here, I've learned that this is an elevation where things change. Most winters, there are days when the snow piles up on our street, though just 100 feet down slope, the roads are clear. Below us, the natural vegetation is oak woodland; above us, the conifers begin to close ranks into a proper forest. Every spring, the acorn-loving Scrub Jays and the conifer-dwelling Steller's Jays do battle over our yard.
This invisible ecological boundary has probably been fairly stable for centuries, wavering a few hundred feet up and down the hillsides with short-term climate fluctuations. It has remained even as the Oregon landscape has been completely transformed over the past 160 years of European settlement. It has remained because it is based not on biology, but on physics. The average temperature decreases by 3.5° Fahrenheit for every 1,000 feet of elevation gain, because the thinner air at higher altitudes can hold less heat. Cooler temperatures change both the water regime -- especially the snow level -- and the fire danger, which together do much to determine vegetation in the West. And so, physics and biology have collaborated to create a noticeable environmental transition right about where I live.
Today, that transition is in transition. The physics that relates temperature to elevation isn't changing, but the baseline temperature is. If global warming produces a 3-4 degree increase in annual average temperature by 2100, as most models suggest, my house will find itself in the climate and vegetation now found 1,000 feet lower. No more snow to deal with, but my Douglas firs probably won't make it, and good-bye, Steller's Jays. Hello, clammy winter fog and a lot more summer days over 100 degrees. It's not a happy picture.
But the truly significant changes will be happening higher, on the 4,000-6,000 foot-high ridges that ring our valley and hold the snow that melts in the spring to feed our creeks and rivers. More than by any other change, global warming threatens the West with a seemingly simple trick: changing snow into rain. Without snowmelt, even if total precipitation remains exactly the same, we are in for a lot of trouble. The timed release of water from snow keeps forest soils moist well into the summer, buffers streams from floods, and allows irrigation districts to manage water distribution throughout the year. This January, I gaze across the valley toward the peaks, and I see no snow. I realize that this is likely a yearly anomaly, but such sights will become the norm soon enough. When that happens, will the West be able to sustain the population we have now, much less the population growth that so many boosters still promote?
This vision of the future has me looking at the topography in a new way. I spent much of the past summer climbing up and down the walls of my valley, ever mindful of the elevation. My friend Jim Chamberlain and I documented these familiar landscapes as if for the first time, collecting natural history information, making notes and taking photographs. Together, we produced a profile of our environment as it is, and a series of meditations on what is to come. This work (available at www.shiftingpatterns.org) has become a focus for community education and discussion about climate change.
Here is what I urge you to do: Look at your home topography. What is your elevation? When the talk of climate change blurs into a fog of generalizations, explore the elevations of places you know and love (Google Earth is a great tool for this). Then imagine them a few degrees hotter, with the climate now found hundreds or a thousand feet lower down the mountain.
That is our future, unless we can convince ourselves to get serious about climate change.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a biologist and writer who lives in Ashland, Oregon.]]>
And today, for the first time in all my visits, the breeze carries no whiff of cow. Today, the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is virtually cow-free.
Last April 15, a painstakingly negotiated deal between environmentalists and ranchers went into effect, retiring 46,345 acres of grazing leases inside the monument, as well as an additional 12,253 acres of grazing on adjacent public lands. Just under 94 percent of the national monument is now permanently closed to livestock grazing, and all the lease retirements occurred through voluntary buyouts, financed entirely by non-government funds raised by a local grassroots environmental group, the Soda Mountain Wilderness Council.
This is a watershed event in the history of the West. For the early settlers, all the dry and rocky country beyond the Great Plains was considered rangeland. Cows were turned loose everywhere: on the sagebrush flats of the Great Basin, the desert grasslands of the Southwest, the alpine meadows of the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, and the open pine forests of the inland plateaus and valleys. And everywhere the cows went, they fundamentally transformed the West.
Unlike native grazers such as elk and bison, cattle are riparian animals. They naturally cluster around rivers, streams, springs and wet meadows -- anywhere they can find water. And in their clustering, their trampling of overhanging banks, their stripping of riparian vegetation, their wallowing and their defecating, cattle rapidly and profoundly degraded the hydrology of half a continent.
The deep gullies and arroyos that mark the Western landscape are not, for the most part, natural. They resulted from severe erosion and down-cutting -- often to the bedrock -- of streams that once meandered through wet meadows.
Away from the streams, cattle impacts have been just as severe. The arid plant communities west of the Great Plains did not evolve with heavy grazing pressure. Following the introduction of cattle and sheep, it took very little time before native perennial bunchgrasses were overgrazed and the full-scale invasion of the West by aliens like cheatgrass, medusahead and toadflax began. Most of the arid West represents marginal habitat for cattle, and even though public lands are leased for a pittance at $1.35/month for each cow/calf pair, lease-holding ranchers still struggle to make a living.
A staggering 260 million acres are leased for livestock production by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, representing 92 percent of BLM and 69 percent of Forest Service land in the West. However, these public lands support only 1.4 percent of the cattle producers, and provide only 2 percent of the feed used by livestock in the United States. Never has so much land been sacrificed for the use of so few, producing so little benefit.
But let's leave the numbers behind. Walk yourself through a stretch of your local public land, where the cows are. Imagine it, if you can, cow-free. The damage may have been great, and the recovery will be slow. But this trail, now paved with cow dung and buzzing with flies, can be clean and quiet and scented only with wildflowers or sage. That stream, where the herd now stands in the sun-baked mud, could once again wander through a wet meadow, its trout-filled waters cool beneath the shade of clustering willows. That hillside, now skinned down to patches of compacted dirt and stubble, could once again be furred with bunchgrass and wildflowers.
The public lands of the West have far higher value as wildlife habitat, as the basis for our fragile water cycle, and as the last silent, open spaces on a crowded continent than as marginal pasture for cows. Lease by lease, district by district, we need to retire public lands grazing, so that one day, we'll be able to top any rise and look out across the broad land; healthy, whole, as it once was, as it should be: cow free. Here in southern Oregon, we've proven that it can be done.
Pepper Trail is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is a biologist and writer in Ashland, Oregon.]]>


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Virginia boasts 250+ wineries, each having its own signature taste. See what you're missing.
Virginia's vineyards are beautiful. Savor the view while you also savor the vintage at these wineries boasting impeccable views. Their patios and decks are perfect for summer evening unwinding.
Sample Virginia's finest fruit in a glass at any number of festivals across the Commonwealth. Whether at a historic venue or expo center, you'll surely find the one you love.
Travel Virginia's wine trails to discover award-winning wines from intimate farm wineries to immaculate tasting rooms. There are 17 trails and counting!
Grab your friends and head to the nearest winery for tours, tastings and special events.
Every glass of Virginia wine tells a unique story. Whether it's paired with a kayak wine tasting adventure on the Eastern Shore or breathtaking mountain sunsets in the Blue Ridge Mountains,
local bluegrass shows on Main Street or on the grounds of a historic site, these stories are what transform a simple glass of wine into a Virginia wine experience. Follow your passion for travel,
and wine, to Virginia wineries and discover a local flavor only found in Virginia.
Virginia is a wine destination unlike any other with 280 wineries, dozens of wine trails surrounded by lavish scenery, breathtaking views, quaint small towns and monumental historic sites.
Wine trails allow aficionados to sip their way across the Commonwealth and experience everything from Albarino to Viognier. Be sure to include an exclusive winemaker's dinner or festival to your trail pursuit. Or, happen upon live music and hot air balloon rides.
Stretch your stay a day or two longer when you book a travel package. Packages include winery visits, at least one night of accommodations, and frequently, meals, discounts and extra goodies.
Find out what's going on around Virginia. Subscribe to the Virginia eNewsletter.

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THE PARTY As fate would have it, the end of the Mayan calendar just happened to coincide with the birthday of the city's premier woman about town, Christa Wittmier. Ready to move on to the next big thing, she decided to do the last of her usual large-scale birthday celebrations. So, to mark the end of the era—and perhaps, the end of the world!— she invited droves of friends and fans to The Republik. THE PLAYERS Actress Jennifer Lawrence and director Francis Lawrence, crew members of The Hunger Games and Hawaii Five-0, pro surfers Keala Kennelly and Jamie O'Brien, Paula Rath, Kuhao Zane THE SCENE A longtime headline supporter of Pow Wow Hawaii—one of Honolulu's biggest urban art gatherings—Wittmier, aka Super CW, turned her party into a fundraiser for the group's next outing. BEST IN SHOW Designer Matt Bruening's show drew raves from the crowd, both for his smart use of fabrics and dramatic staging. Photography by Travis Okimoto


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Guitar Hero: Van Halen - Nintendo Wii for $4.99 + free shipping
Might as well jump? Probably a one-day deal; free shipping or store pickup.
6 Comments add a comment
Not available for local pickup in my area
I totally forgot this game existed and I have it.
@redbarchetta: Not available for local pickup in my area either but...ships free to my house. Obviously that makes it a no-go for a Christmas present but...otherwise...saves me the gas money to go pick it up in the store... WINNING!!!
@wickedd365: I can beat that. I have the whole set (drums, keyboard, etc) in an unopened box in the basement. Ended up not giving it as the intended Christmas present that year (3 or 4 years ago maybe), so there it still sits. Maybe it'll be a collector's item somewhere down the road?
@pitamuffin: I would be really quite surprised. Games from recent consoles have only lost value over time, there aren't any that are particularly collectible that I have heard of. You might find someone willing to pay you the original retail if you're lucky.
This game is great if you're okay pretending Sammy Hagar never existed.


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Home > Food > Recipes > Split Pea and Bacon Soup
Split Pea and Bacon Soup
Categories: Big-Batch Meals, Comfort Foods, Entertaining, Kid-friendly
Type: Soups and Stews
Type: Soups and Stews
Everyone loves split pea soup when you add lots of tasty bacon to it.
Prep Time: 15M
Cooking Time: 2H15M
Serves: Serves 8
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 15oz (425g) bacon or pancetta, chopped into bite-size pieces
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 4 celery ribs, finely chopped
- 4 carrots, finely chopped
- 11/4lb (550g) yellow split peas
- 6 cups hot vegetable stock
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- Heat half the oil in a large heavy-based saucepan, add the bacon or pancetta, and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until crispy. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Heat the remaining oil in the pan, add the onions, and cook over low heat for 6-8 minutes or until soft. Season with salt and pepper, then add the celery and carrots and cook over low heat for 5 minutes.
- Add the peas and stock and bring slowly to a boil. Cover with a lid, reduce to a simmer, and cook for 2 hours or until the peas are tender. Check occasionally and add hot water if the soup begins to look too thick. Transfer to a food processor or blender and process until smooth and blended. Return the bacon or pancetta to the pan, then season with salt and pepper.
- Let cool completely, then transfer to a freezer-proof container, seal, and freeze for up to 3 months.
- To serve, defrost overnight in the refrigerator, transfer to a saucepan and heat until piping hot. Serve with crusty bread.
excerpted from:
Excerpted from The Illustrated Quick Cook.
Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley Limited.
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Jefferson County Adult Parole Authority
Arrested: Sean T. Dudley, 34, 1212 Adams St., Steubenville, parole violation, Monday.
Jefferson County
Arrested: Kevin Hazel, 28, Massillon; Rita Alexander, 33, no fixed address; Harold Turowski, 29, Carrollton; and Daniel Hazel, 39, Massillon, all for criminal trespassing and theft, today, in connection with the theft of scrap metal from property on state Route 164 in Salineville.
Theft: A home on state Route 164 in Springfield Township was broken into and cash and jewelry taken between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. Monday.
Cited: James P. Kish, 54, 3590 state route 151, Mingo Junction, overweight vehicle.
Cited for speeding: Jacob R. Bendle, 19, 855 Washington St., Bergholz, and Nicholas A. Rodriguez, 22, 280 South Walnut St., Richmond.
Ohio State Highway Patrol
Arrested: Rick Nale, 52, Bloomingdale, receiving stolen property, Monday.
Arrested: Gary T. Barnes, 24, 967 Sherman Ave., Steubenville, two counts of gross sexual imposition, Monday.
Cited: Jordan K. Banks, 20, 586 Lovers Lane, Steubenville, no seat belt.
Theft: A home in the 2400 block of Chestnut Street was entered through a window and a phone, two coats and a sledge hammer were taken in the last few days.


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Hudson Valley Lighting 5505-SN Satin Nickel Wilton 5 Light Bathroom Vanity Fixture
Offer Ends
Technical Specs
|Bulb Base
|Medium (E26)
|Bulb Type
|Compact Fluorescent, Incandescent
|Finish Application
|Full Backplate
|Traditional, Transitional
|Light Direction
|Up Lighting
|Number of Bulbs
|Suggested Room Fit
|UL Listed
|UL Rating
|Damp Location
|Watts Per Bulb
An intricate tension of opposites plays across the Wilton bath collection. Cast linear steps, linked by subtle curves, constitute Wilton's handsome metal socket holder. The bell contour of the opal glass is a unique contrast to its four-sided figure. These fixtures add a sensual touch to your bath without sacrificing neatness and order.
- Height: 7.5"
- Width: 39.5"
- Extension: 7.5"
- Backplate Height: 5.75"
- Backplate Width: 4.5"
- Shade Height: 4.625"
- Shade Top Diameter: 1.625"
- Shade Bottom Diameter: 5"
Electrical Specifications:
- Number of Bulbs: 5
- Bulb Base: Medium (E26)
- Bulb Type: Incandescent, CFL
- Maximum Watts per Bulb: 60 (Incandescent) / 26 (CFL)
- Bulb Included: No
- Voltage: 120
- UL / cUL Listed
Additional Hudson Valley Lighting Links
- View Manufacturer Warranty
- Shop All Hudson Valley Lighting Products
- Shop All Hudson Valley Lighting Wilton Collection Products
Our SKU: 5505
This product is listed under the following manufacturer number(s):
- Polished Nickel
- Satin Nickel
*Denotes a finish or option that has been discontinued
2 Questions from the Community
Thank you for your question! This is only recommended for down lighting.
Can this fixture be mounted up or down?
A. Thank you for your question! This is only recommended for down lighting.
The Hudson Valley Lighting 5505 may be installed either up or down facing to be an up light or down light.
What direction can this be installed?
The Hudson Valley Lighting 5505 may be installed either up or down facing to be an up light or down light.
Hudson Valley Lighting Wilton Collection
Other Products In The Hudson Valley Lighting Wilton Collection
Hudson Valley Lighting 5504
Four Light 32" Wide Bathroom Fixture from the Wilt...$482.00-$482.00
Hudson Valley Lighting 5501
Single Light 5" Wide Bathroom Fixture from the Wil...$172.00-$172.00
Hudson Valley Lighting 5503
Three Light 24.5" Wide Bathroom Fixture from the W...$376.00-$376.00
Hudson Valley Lighting 5502
Two Light 17" Wide Bathroom Fixture from the Wilto...$278.00-$278.00
Warranty Info
Hudson Valley Lighting, Inc. products when properly installed and under normal conditions of use, are warranted to our customers only to be free from defect in material and workmanship at time of shipment. All warranty claims must be asserted with one year from date of shipment of the subject items; thereafter warranty claims will not be honored. Customer's sole remedy for a warranty claim or otherwise shall be limited to repair or replacement of the subject product if it is shown to have been defective in material or workmanship at time of shipment. Hudson Valley Lighting, Inc.'s sole and maximum liability for a defective product shall never exceed the cost of the subject product. Except for such warranty and exclusive remedy as stated, (and the express warranty of title), we disclaim all other warranties, whether express or implied and specifically disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall we be liable to customer in warranty, contract negligence, strict liability or otherwise, for any damages, whether incidental or consequential, which are alleged to be caused by one or more of our products, beyond the cost to the customer of a subject product or products. Therefore, the customer's sole and exclusive remedy against us for breach of warranty, breach of contract or in negligence or in strict liability or otherwise shall be limited to repair or replacement of the subject product at our option (excluding installation and removal charges which shall not be our liability) or, if we choose, refund of the purchase price.


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13 Jul 2011 7:21 AM #1
[CLOSED] Full Screen BorderLayoutContainer
I can't figure out how to force the BorderLayoutContainer to be full screen/consume all its parents space, like: http://www.sencha.com/examples-dev/#...e:borderlayout
Instead of: con.setPixelSize(800, 400);
I was looking for somthing like: con.setSize("100%", "100%");
(setAutoHeight and setAutoWidth aren't as well no solution)
13 Jul 2011 7:22 AM #2
You have to use a Viewport.
Viewport v = new Viewport(); v.add(new BorderLayoutContainer());
13 Jul 2011 8:10 AM #3
14 Jul 2011 9:16 AM #4
Another question: Where can I find out how and which tags need to be used and structured for the UiBinder declaration, based on existing java code? Current example: I just can't find out how to translate the following TabPanel code:
TabPanel tabPanel = new TabPanel();
HTML shortText = new HTML("Content 1");
tabPanel.add(shortText, "Tab 1");
HTML longText = new HTML("Content 2");
tabPanel.add(longText, "Tab 2");
panel.add(iconTab, config);
... a general answer, which can also be aplied to other Components, whould be great!!


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mavrach wrote:Rubber - I saw the trailer on my 13 Assassins DVD, and it's about a possessed TIRE that kills people with psychic powers. Since that's an idea that's so impressively stupid that it would take a genius to think it up, I was immediately attracted to it and found it on Netflix streaming. I got a big surprise because this turned out to be completely pretentious. Attempted philosophising, having a subplot about the audience, really full of itself. I guess they were as impressed with their killer tire idea as I was. I was looking for a Hobo With A Shotgun-type laugh at a crazy idea.
Yup, the opening sequence alone completely destroyed any goodwill I had toward the film. It was garbage.


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I DONT KNOW, Salekt whispers back, and then signals for me to be quiet as the court officials continue conversing. He, Kiyachi and I are all riveted by the sight of them, and by Galinicus standing in stoic silence. A torrential downpour lashes the windows, but despite this, the fiends have found us! As they did before, they swarm and climb up and down the outside walls of the ecclesiastical court. They hiss and click with renewed fury, knowing that the Imperatrix is within. However, they cannot charge inside and claim Kiyachi, because every space consecrated by our clergymen is holy. From the towering heights of our churchs roof to the humble dirt floors of its followers houses, each blessed site remains safe from harm. If a fiend even attempts to enter one of these, it will be obliterated by our gods magnificent power!
Nevertheless, that doesnt stop them from trying. A few leeches poke their glowing heads through some cracks theyve found in the courtroom walls. With screeches of agony, they shrivel and disappear. Before they do, however, they seem to give a more human-sounding death wail than a fiendish one
Salekt turns to me, still in his ghostly human form. I know what theyre saying, he rasps.
They want Kiyachi and my sister, whom I pray is still alive, and will not stop until they have both in their grasp.
What shall we do, then?
My guide puts a finger to his lips:
He points at Kiyachi, who catches his eye, and then at the pew:
Stay inside!
His gaze is stern, which means these are commands and not requests. Taking my ethereal hand, he then floats up toward the ceiling of the courtroom, with me clinging to his shade for dear life. Once weve phased through its wet tile roof, and are surrounded by the driving rain, I dare to speak again:
What about Galinicus? You should have ordered me to stay inside as well, so I could help him!
How? You know how nervous those charlatan court officials were at the thought of spirits among them? The only thing you might have tried was to possess either your master or one of them, in order to speak through them, which would have ended in disaster. The clergymen would have called their Invokers to perform an exorcism, and you would not only have been lost, but annihilated like the leeches! Trust me: its better this way, and that Kiyachi stays behind. Not only will she be safe from the fiends, but the voice of an Imperatrix carries. Perhaps, now that she is in her spirit form instead of a physical one, shell be able to call to us from the courtroom and tell us whats going on. Her mortal speech was certainly formidable!
What if the court officials call for an exorcism if Kiyachi tries?
Salekt sighs. Youre right. Thats a risk she probably wont be willing to take. Oddly enough, even eternal suffering in the Abyss is preferable to outright obliteration. Theres something to be said for existence.
Even in that particular case? Im not sure I believe you, but Ill take you at your word
I clear my throat, which I can barely feel or sense. If so, or even if not, what should we do now? How do we find Anya?
Theres one theory I have, he answers, which rests upon what I already know about her. Our god knows that in this city hes forsaken, there are few life paths available besides farmer, merchant, wife or whore! Thats why my parents, whilst they were still married, decided what Anya and I would do for the rest of our days. I was to become a scholar, apprenticed to the sage Voranti, and my sister would be an ascetic. She would spend the rest of her life praying, scrubbing the church floors, and serving our god and humanity.
Let me guess: she didnt like that?
Not by an arrows long shot! After spending her childhood and early youth in a cloistered chapel near the main church building, Anya decided to run away. I dont know where she is now, but I have heard rumors while Ive been here in Thorüsa. The fiends murmur Anyas name, and in my minds eye, I see a tower.
What kind? A watchtower, or a fortress?
A DARK TOWER, answers Salekt, and in a literal sense. Its walls are made of pure obsidian, which is not only incredibly rare in these parts, but incredibly expensive. Its an imported rock, which makes me doubt that the tower is actually real. Who on earth would have enough money to build it? He shakes his head. Nevertheless, whenever I hear the fiends hiss my sisters name, thats the image which seizes me.
Could the tower of obsidian be metaphorical, symbolizing Anyas power?
If so, then were still at a loss as to how to find her. She could be anywhere, and Ive spent the past year in Thorüsa looking for any trace. Our churchs clergymen do not take desertions lightly, and from Anyas letters, Ive gathered that she was one of their most guarded acolytes. His expression contains a sudden gravitas that makes me shudder. When she finally managed to flee the chapel for good, it wasnt the first time shed attempted to do so. Anyas written that the Invokers put her in chains after each escape, and would not release her until she spent a fortnight on her knees! Whatever shes done since then, however, does it merit the Abyss? He shakes his head again. Enough. We must begin the search, and quickly!
After a long pause, I ask my mentor and guide: Do you really need my help in finding her?
Of course! he shouts, and then his look softens. What I mean is that I know you want to help Galinicus, but at this point, theres not much we can do. The court officials think that visitations by spirits are evil, and neither of us wants to risk being exorcised. If we both look for my sister and try to convince her to repent before she dies, then we both will have accomplished what weve set out to do in Thorüsa. Were here to warn the living, and to rescue fugitive shades who are lost. Kiyachis safe for now, and if the Harrower is willing, Anya shall be too. Our god may be more stern than the stone of the dark tower, but at least he and his church preach penitence. I nod solemnly, and Salekt morphs back into his leech form once were back at ground level. As always, follow the fiends if you want to find their next victim. We fall silent.
Over the hills and fields we fly, with Salekt latching onto me so that Im not overtaken by the swarm. Its strange: why can I no longer see the pulsing of light and shadow, life and death, that I first saw in every living thing once I entered Thorüsa? The blades of grass beneath us look just as ordinary as they did while I was awake.
I suppose that just as our living eyes adjust to darkness, so our spiritual eyes adjust to the magnificent but overwhelming presence of these currents.
Its both a relief and a shame at the same time. As much as I want to regain my former vision, I know that its being lost, little by little. In this world, we first notice everything, and then if were not careful, we come to notice nothing, absorbed by the cares of life
Having spent so little time among the fiends, Im startled when they hiss a single, all-too-familiar name.
Lets go! My sisters death must be far closer than I thought! His leech-teeth clench me tightly, almost to the point of pain in my spirit form. We race along the ground, trailing the particular fiends who are intent on seizing Anya for their own. They never call for a certain person unless that ones end is nigh! We rush along with the leeches toward their destination, but I dont see any obsidian tower in the distance. Are Salekts visions inaccurate, or merely too early to count as accurate? All I see is more muddy fields, strewn with wet stubble that always stands miserably upright after the harvest. No one else is in sight, whether mortal man, leech, celestial or shade. The only sounds are rolling thunder and ever-driving rain.
It occurs to me that theres no way we could turn back and reach the courtroom in a hurry if we need to. Were so far away from the ecclesiastical site that not even its spire is visible in the far distance anymore. Salekt and I are literally in no-mans land, and I start to wonder if weve been led astray by the fiends. After all, they are minions of our Great Foe, the master of lies and deceit. How will we ever find our way back to the familiar places weve been before, and to Galinicus especially? We travel further onward.
As a bolt of white light strikes the ground, nearly vaporizing our spirit forms, we both shriek in terror. Salekt screeches rather than crying out, still in the guise of a leech. Taking deep breaths, we move forward more cautiously, and then hear a voice similar to Kiyachis. Like hers, it is female, and like hers, it resonates on the howling wind. However, unlike that of the Imperatrix, this voice is imbued with the blazing heat of rage.
LIE DOWN, DOGS! roars the voice, sounding more like a mountain lions than a womans. Have you all forgotten why youre here? Have you forgotten, in a drunken stupor, that for which you stand?! As we and the ever-numerous fiends tumble over the crest of a hill, we see a muscular lass very much like Kiyachi indeed, except that this ones fist is raised in a rebels classic gesture. Her face is beet-red and dripping with rain and sweat. She surveys the gray-uniformed minions who lie prostrate before her in the mud.
Who are we?
comes the reply of fifty-odd males and females, their voices hoarse with exhaustion.
Ha! More like straw men. Do you know what you truly are? Maggots, the helpless young of flies, who wriggle and writhe before they earn their wings! At this rate, I dont think any of you will. How do you think youre going to take up arms against the church of the Harrower when you can barely lift a sword? I had to learn to fight, its true, but I learn quickly. Im surprised that any of you can remember your own names! She strides up and down the rows of makeshift soldiers, who still lie with their faces to the ground. None of them can bear to gaze up at their commander, who rains blows down upon their backs with a whip. At last she stops in front of a young man, barely Salekts age, and whips him lightly. Get up, you idiot!
We hear him cough this answer as blood mixed with spittle flies out of his mouth. He clutches his side as if it were a glass vase about to break, and grits his teeth. In response, his superior places her right boot upon his neck and presses down. In a sudden motion, she twists it, and the horrible cracking sound we hear isnt just the thunder overhead. The commander kicks her victims body aside, and asks the rest:
Who am I?
Thats right. Youd better use my full name, or youll end up like that corpse on the ground. He was weak, and wouldnt have lasted much longer even without trying to learn the ways of battle. However, all of you are like him at heart. You are not yet made of stone, but if you follow my every command, you shall be.
Can spirits retch and upheave their guts? Salekt certainly tries, but nothing emerges from his mouth.
Anyuta squares her broad shoulders. To the Watchtower. March! Her bedraggled soldiers rise to their feet, shake the worst of the rain out of their quartz-gray uniforms, and fall into line behind her. A man at the rear tries to turn and pick up the body of his slain comrade, but a woman at his side clutches his forearm. Salekt and I notice that the gaze on her face is both fearful and murderous: Dont. Shell kill you. We stare, absolutely astonished, as the leeches swarm around the fallen soldier, but cannot seem to find his soul. Have the celestials collected him already? There are no signs of the céli about, which is strange. Then I remember:
Thorüsa is for those who are trying to escape damnation or salvation, not accept it. Perhaps the poor young lad who Anyuta killed is safe in the arms of our god, if you can call it that.
As we follow the ragtag army along their mud-and-rut-covered path, coinciding with that of the fiends, I sigh and whisper to Salekt: That cant be your sister.
It is. Im the only one she ever permitted to call her Anya. Not even Mother and Father could do that.
I cant say Im surprised. Out loud I ask him, How did she end up this way, and become so cruel?
I know not, except that our clergy will exact a dire payment from her if shes caught. He turns his leech-head toward me. She wants to take up arms against the church of the Harrower? Has she lost her mind? Many have tried in the past, but none has succeeded! There were the Harrowers Chosen fifty years ago, who thought they were especially favored by our god, more than our Invokers and Inquisitors. However, they were wrong. Dead wrong. More recently, there were Salvations Sons, but they faced the stake, too.
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Had the folks at the Pentagon asked my opinion, I would have said that creating an "R" (for "rear") device for the Bronze Star would be a better solution than this new medal.
How about a Bronze Star with REMF device?
creating an "R" (for "rear") device


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9 Sep 2012 11:44 PM #1
Unanswered: mouseout of tab panel not hiding the n hover menu button
I have a Ext.tab.Panel inside which i have a treepanel, on mouse over of each row of treepanel i have a menubutton displayed. The problem iam facing is when i first move mouse over a row of tree panel the on hover menu button displays but when i move out of the treepanel the mouse over menu button does not go away. I have tried containermouseout with no success ...... what is it that iam missing?
17 Sep 2012 8:37 AM #2
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Are you hiding the menu at some point?Mitchell Simoens @LikelyMitch
Sencha Inc, Senior Software Engineer
Check out my GitHub, lots of nice things for Ext JS 4 and Sencha Touch 2
Think my support is good? Get more personalized support via a support subscription. https://www.sencha.com/store/
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How to capture screenshot of entire webpage in iPhone's Safari browser like I can take in my Desktop with Help of Firefox Addon called Fireshot?
After searching a lot on this thing finally I got the solution. Website Screenshot worked perfectly for me.
Nuc's answer would give you a screen shot that renders accurately but would not show the Safari chrome but with very little work.
Another more difficult option would be to take multiple screenshots by pressing wake+home, scrolling in between so that there is a small overlap between shots. You could then offload them onto a PC/Mac and then composite them together. The benefit is you would get the full Safari UI showing.
I use PixiWeb to capture website screenshots in its entirety or only visible area.
It also allows saving screenshots as PDF. Sharing options are quite impressive too (most social media sites).
Although not free, you may get websnaps using Cinder (ex. LittleSnapper)
Try iScreenshot
Try Webpage Capture ($1.99) for iPhone/iPad. It promises
and also saves to PDF.
We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer; explain why your answer is right, ideally with citations. Answers that don't include explanations may be removed.
Other options include:
Solves this problem by generating a screenshot of the entire page. All you have to do is open up a webpage in Barry's built-in browser and hit Capture. It'll save a full-length screenshot to an in-app camera roll where you can export it to your main camera roll, Dropbox, an email, a Tweet, or your clipboard.
The developers also included a useful Safari bookmarklet that sends your current page straight to the app so you won't have to copy the URL and dig around your home screen to find it.
The other alternative you could do, is to access the mobile version of the website concerned, resize the window to match that of your iPhone window and use the extension to take the screenshot.


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Hybrid View
29 Feb 2012 4:37 AM #1
Working with associated models #5 - hasOne setter problem
from the previus post
this applies to Extjs 4.1 beta 1 beta 2 and beta 3 source code.
(having the correct concept of has one) "Has one" setter should take the given id and set the associated model id with this value, since the forerign key is in the associated model, not as "belongs to" where the foreign is in the owner model.
Heres a test case to check the errors.
these models represent person (per model ) and user account (usr model)
associations are "person has one user account" and "user account belongs to a person"
Ext.define('per', { extend: 'Ext.data.Model', fields: [ {name:'perId' ,type:'int'} ], hasOne:[ {model:'usr', associationKey:'usr', primaryKey:'perId', foreignKey:'perId', getterName:'usr', setterName:'usrSet'} ], idProperty: 'perId' }); Ext.define('usr', { extend: 'Ext.data.Model', fields: [ {name:'usrId' ,type:'int'}, {name:'perId' ,type:'int'}, ], belongsTo:[ {model:'per', associationKey:'per', primaryKey:'perId', foreignKey:'perId', getterName:'per', setterName:'perSet'} ], idProperty: 'usrId' });
// Testing belongsTo id propagation var per = Ext.create('per',{perId : 4}); var usr = Ext.create('usr',{usrId : 7}); usr.perSet(per); // appending per to usr should set usr.perId to 4 console.log('BelongsTo test'); console.log(per.data); // nothing has changed, which is correct. console.log(usr.data); // usr.perId now its 7, which is correct.
// Testing hasOne id propagation var per = Ext.create('per',{perId : 4}); var usr = Ext.create('usr',{usrId : 7}); per.usrSet(usr); // appending usr to per should set usr.perId to 4 console.log('HasOne test'); console.log(per.data); // per.perId now its 7, copied the usr.usrId to per.perId as an expected error. console.log(usr.data); // nothing has changed, usr.perId wasnt set
this code is from the source of HasOne association (red comments are mine)
createSetter: function() { var me = this, ownerModel = me.ownerModel, // unused var ? foreignKey = me.foreignKey; //'this' refers to the Model instance inside this function return function(value, options, scope) { // wrong code start ----------------------------------------------------------- if (value && value.isModel) { //value shouldnt optionally be a model, always must be a model. value = value.getId(); } this.set(foreignKey, value); // shouldnt set a value to "this" model // the id should propagate from "this" model // to the associated model (passed as first parameter "value") // thats the conceptual meaning of "hasOne" // wrong code end ----------------------------------------------------------- if (Ext.isFunction(options)) {options = {callback: options,scope: scope || this};} if (Ext.isObject(options)) {return this.save(options);} }; },
createSetter: function() { var me = this, ownerModel = me.ownerModel, foreignKey = me.foreignKey; //'this' refers to the Model instance inside this function return function(value, options, scope) { value.set(foreignKey,this.getId()); // value must be always a model // this line should replace the wrong code if (Ext.isFunction(options)) { options = {callback: options,scope: scope || this};} if (Ext.isObject(options)) { return this.save(options);} }; },
29 Feb 2012 6:42 AM #2
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Bugs forum...Mitchell Simoens @LikelyMitch
Sencha Inc, Senior Software Engineer
Check out my GitHub, lots of nice things for Ext JS 4 and Sencha Touch 2
Think my support is good? Get more personalized support via a support subscription. https://www.sencha.com/store/
Need more help with your app? Hire Sencha Services email@example.com
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6 Mar 2012 12:14 PM #3
mitchel theres a reason to post in discussion forums and not in Q&A or Bugs, the reason is im new to extjs im not sure this problems are bugs, so i post here just to get some feeback as you did in one saying "thats not 100% correct". after i im sure thats a bug (maybe) ill post in bugs forum. I dont expect ppl posting "post in another forum" thats not even a comment, over that you are forum manager i guess u can move posts but bug forums has a format. after hours trying to figure the problem theres no "extra" hours left to post using the bugs forum format, i have my own work and i dont work for sencha, i think i did my part sharing my notes so other ppl dont waste their time, if its a real bug.


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Fox loves a good shootout - as you probably guessed by the fact that it was dusting off the 24 franchise. Now word has come out that the network will be working with Tom Fontana (Homicide: Life on the Street) on a new limited-run drama series that will focus on the infamous Billy the Kid.
The series will look at Billy's origins, showing how he became a celebrity and was one of America's first "outlaw heroes." The legend says that Billy the Kid (born William Henry McCarty) killed 21 men by the time he himself was gunned down at 21. He began killing at 16. But the truth of the matter is that Billy's legend is embellished and enhanced, as he actually spent the last years of his short life trying to clear his name. This series will strive to provide a deeper-look into who Billy the Kid actually was.
Fontana will be writing the project, with Barry Levinson on board to executive produce.
Fox has cited the success of History's Hatfields & McCoys as one of the reasons it is moving forward with this project.
Does this sound like a winner to you? I know the details are a little scarce at this point, but I think there is some real potential in this project.