What I Saw in California Episode 02: Domestic Water

Up at Pulgas Ridge Megadog and I walk the Cordilleras Trail past the multiple-addiction rehab center tucked at the edge of San Francisco Water Department land. This open space, reserved for hikers and their dogs, is flanked by the rehab on one side and the county mental health services on the other. Sometimes we see guys playing basketball out in back of the rehab building, its tile roof and pale stucco walls aging with Katherine Hepburn style under California live oaks. Sometimes we see them tending their garden, where tomatoes still ripen on the vine on into the fall. Occasionally, they are out playing cards in the morning heat, or washing cars to raise funds for the center. Today, no one.

Music from ccMixter by copperhead: "I Need Something;" and by Alex Beroza: "Too Young," featuring snowflake.

View the license under which this music is used.

What I Saw in California Episode 01: Sweet Marie

It doesn’t help that I have PMS on the day my chicken dies. I find her in the backyard coop, one wing drooping out of the nest, her head lolling. I have always told myself that if illness struck my tiny flock of two I would face it with the pragmatic detachment of a farmer, letting nature take its course or, in the interest of humane treatment, helping nature along by whatever means I had at my disposal (but not owning an axe, I’m not sure what I expected I would do: twist the necks of birds I had named “Visions of Johanna” and “Absolutely Sweet Marie”?).

Music from ccMixter: "Our Father," by Alex Beroza, featuring FORENSIC; and "I Need Something," by copperhead, featuring Admiral Bob, WillemWillem, Norm Peterson, and Robert Siekawitch.