Section 1.....Pine Mountain News
Hello everyone. It is mid May already where is the year going.
The Santa Barbara fire is 90% contained. There is only 1 rugged ridge that is still burning.
The toll so far 80 homes destroyed. 79 outbuildings burned. 8,733 acres burned. To top it all off we had a 4.5 earthquake in Ventura county. Normally we call it Shake N Bake when it warms up and we have small earthquakes, but this year it seems to be Shake N Burn.
In other news Tomorrow May 16 is the 27 th Annual Lilac Festival over in Pine Mountain Village
It starts at 9 AM. There are lots of Art and craft booths and even a parade on Mil Potrero highway at 11 AM.
Here at the ranch just the normal ranch chores. We rearranged the ranch office painted the walls a cream mocha color and put down a light tan carpet. The office was well worn and shabby before now it is clean and new.
Well enough about Pine Mountain. For daily ranch news follow Rocket the horse on twitter at PineMountain.
Now it is time for our resident poet and her story of a trip to Hollywood.
Section 2 .....Poem of the Week
42 hours in Hollywood
It is not a long time. but I crawled all over the city of angels
and left with a smile on my plain Jane.
1. To the Westin downtown for a bit of a nap after a 40 hour AMTRAK.
2. Venice beach mimosa, outline paper on social media
3. Influence where meep meep me is the case study
4. Santa Monica library, blog and free books!
5. Lunch on Santa Monica mall, bit o ballet, da gap, et cet.
6. Manhattan beach for beer & sunset on the surf
7. Drive to Hollywood w/ palm tree branch hanging out
of convertible SAAB of me dear friend HOD!
8. Hotel cafe, met Swilly kid writer, Indie ROCK..not..roll
9. Silver lake...just quick like & back as a flash to
10. Hollywood late night, The Toons, The Cats, oh me, oh my
11. We...ho to crash and grove early in morning, mimosa.less
12. USC for pee eh dee catchup, papers here & there
13. Picked up by man.friend Wein.Stein & to Brentwood for lunch
and finally 41 hours in to TRIP 13. LAX where I took a nap
A true story of a late April weekend
by em.d.stine
Section 3 .....Buenos Aires Argentina
by Jordan Williams
I’d come close to Argentina on my last trip down to South America, when I visited Chile. Truth be told, anywhere in the long narrow country was near Argentina, but we sidled right up against it when we traveled to Patagonia.
I was going Buenos Aires this time, the capitol city of the country. I’d love to hit Patagonia again, but I needed more time to take that in that I had. A week in Buenos Aires was a fine substitute, though, so I was okay with it.
The Buenos Aires metro area is big, really big. Argentina has about forty million people in the whole country and a third of that lives in and around the capitol. There’s a lot to see and a lot to do, and even a week can seem short.
I was traveling alone for this trip, without the logistic assistance of my buddy Rich, who was sitting out this trip because the wife was pregnant. The side effect of this was that I was doing things in an even more random than usual fashion. Thankfully, Buenos Aires is a full modern city with easy access to public transport and, key for a man of my expansive appetites, thousands of cafes and restaurants.
In honor of that, I asked the first English speaking local I could find what I needed to see while I was there. She told me that I needed to see the Catedral Metropolitana, the Bioparque Temaiken and, if I had the time, the Iguazu Falls. As it happened, these were excellent suggestions, and she did not give into her urge to send a silly American tourist on a wild goose chase.
The Catedral Metropolitana is, as you might expect, a cathedral and one of the oldest buildings in the city. The cathedral was actually different than I was expecting. It’s a huge building, no surprise there, but it’s not the kind of towering monster that you get in Europe, and far more inviting. Inside is the kind of ornate beauty I associated with these religious sights, with art that is centuries old. It conveys a sense of awe, which I think is the point, and can be almost overwhelming to the senses.
The Bioparque Temaiken is about thirty miles north of the central city, but easy to get to by public transportation. I’m tempted to call it a zoo, which it is, but I don’t think that actually sums up the whole experience very well.
Bioparque would translate roughly as BioPark, and that’s probably a more fitting description. It combines elements of a zoo, botanical garden and natural history museum, giving a definitive and awesome look into the flora and fauna of Argentina. That’s the plants and animals for people like me who don’t speak science.
I have the Bioparque a whole day, but I still don’t feel like I did it justice. It’d be a particularly great place for kids, which made me think Rich ought to bring the family down once the new baby is travel ready.
Further north was one of the most spectacular things I’ve seen traveling, the Iguazu Falls. If you think of Niagara Falls on steroids, you’ll have a pretty good picture of the falls. Like Niagara, the Iguazu Falls on the border between Argentina and Brazil. I actually saw the Brazil side too, but the Argentine side has a little more impressive view, to my mind, the water crashing down twenty four stories. The Devil’s Mouth has to be seen to be believed.
I left Argentina exhausted, beat up and supremely happy, and South America was proving to be one of my favorite travel destinations, with Chile and Argentina topping the list.
Section 4 ..... Pine Mountain Evening
It is evening once again and we are gathered in the family room after enjoying a fine dinner.I am relaxing in my recliner by the warm fire in the fireplace. I am enjoying another sample coffee from http://www.coffeefool.com.
Well my coffee is gone now and it is getting late so good night all See you next week.
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