Rocks: rocks and rock formations in and around The Mojave Desert

By Jack Brummet, Travel Editor

I was fascinated by the rock formations we saw in, and around, The Mojave desert this week.   There are many more I wanted to see, but time was limited.  Here are some of my favorite rocks:

That's Keelin in the center of the photo

Split Rock

a view of the Coachella Valley - you can see The Salton Sea in the center below the clouds

These last shots are of my favorite, Skull Rock

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The cactus garden at Joshua Tree National Park

by Jack Brummet

While it is called a garden, nothing was planted, or taken out of this garden.  Like many places the desert, the soil, and relative availability of water determines these odd gatherings of plants.  This cactus garden has several different kinds of cactus, but mainly cholla.  And they are nasty if you brush up against one--I did once years ago in the Sonoran desert.

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The Susan G. Komen Foundation Mess

By Mona Goldwater, Ethics Editor and Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor

We have many mixed emotions about the Susan G. Komen Foundation's withholding of funds from Planned Parenthood.  We're not posing any solutions, or even opinions here. But we do have a lot of anguish, and questions:

• The SGKF has done a lot of good work and funneled a lot of money into a critical cause that previously wasn't even as well-funded as erectile dysfunction research!

• This plays right into the hands of religious fundamentalists, who would like to see Planned Parenthood shut down tomorrow.  Have you been reading the far right news sites and blogs?  There is a celebration going on.

• We've never fully understand how this intra-charity giving works?  While PP is a very noble cause, why does SGKF grant them money they raised for breast cancer research?

• If this boycott continues for very long, the most effective and organized group for raising cash and raising consciousness of this issue will be stifled and probably run out of business.  Does anyone really think the government will step in to replace that money?  We know the government cannot raise awareness; generally when they pick up the mantle of a cause, it becomes a lost cause (remember W.I.N.--whip inflation now?, or D.A.R.E.?).  

• We understand the outrage, and the instant (and emotional and intense) public response of cutting off funds to SGKF and sending those funds to PP.  The digital age means that reactions and movements like this can makes their voices heard within hours.

• Today SGKF leaders--stunned by the blowback--backtracked and claimed their cutoff of funds had nothing to do with the "investigation."  Komen founder Nancy Brinker said the organization wants to support groups that directly provide breast health services, such as mammograms.  Planned Parenthood only provides mammogram referrals.  If they had said that in the first place, would this have almost gone unnoticed?  But they didn't, and now the genie is out of the bottle. 

• If you believe (and support) SGKF's initial statement about not wanting to fund a group under investigation, should you also quit paying your federal income taxes tomorrow?  Because, after all, out of 535 members of congress (give or take a few depending on deaths, resignations, and indictments), these guys are all currently under investigation (roughly 3% of Congress!):

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey)
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) (deceased, but investigation continues)
Sen. Roland Burris (D-Illinois)
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-New York)
Rep. John Doolittle (R-California) - Retiring
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Florida)
Rep. Bob Filner (D-California)
Rep. Jane Harman (D-California)
Rep. William Jefferson (D-Louisiana) - Indicted
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-California)
Rep. Gary Miller (R-California)
Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-West Virginia)
Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pennsylvania)
Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Arizona) - Indicted and Retiring
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska)

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Las Vegas's Neon Museum/Neon Boneyard

The Neon Museum collection of signage consists of a vast Neon Boneyard, and a small collection of restored signs, "the Fremont Street Gallery," and several more signs along Third Street. 

The Boneyard is one of the coolest things we saw in Las Vegas.  It contains hundreds of donated and salvaged signs from the late 1930s through the early 90s from mostly Vegas hotels, businesses, and casinos.  The Museum will open sometime later this year.  In the meantime, they do controlled tours of the Boneyard. 

The Museum's Fremont Street Gallery and Signs Project also has actually fully restored some signs and placed them along Fremont and Third Streets. One small sign cost $20,000 to restore and re-electrify.  We went to see these too, but not at night unfortunately, when they are lit up.

It's about a ten minute drive from the strip and well worth a visit.

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A public scolding in Las Vegas of the Schwartz Law Firm

Photo by Jack Brummet

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Self-portrait: The mural

By Jack Brummet

ATIT Reheated (from five years ago): The internment of The Japanese families of Kent, Washington

By Jack Brummet, Green River Valley Editor

This is a photo of a shop owner in my hometown of Kent, Washington, in 1942.

The first wave of immigrants to the Kent, Washington area happened shortly before 1900. The immigrants were mostly European. There were, even as I was growing up, several Italian families still farming the valley. The 1900 census count shows 13 Japanese families in and around Kent.

The number of Japanese immigrants rose steeply over the next few years until 1907, when the US Government put the brakes on the number of Japanese allowed to immigrate. Eventually, in the 1920's, they banned Japanese immigrants.  Period.  The Anti-Alien Land Law in 1923 barred these immigrants from owning land, or ever becoming citizens. Those with a child born in America could put land in the child's name. Some of the Japanese worked for established farmers and some cleared land and began their own farms in Kent, Auburn, and the nearby villages O'Brien, Orillia, and Thomas (which were annexed to Kent before I was born). 

Many Japanese farmers had dairy farms until the price of milk cratered after WW I. A lot of those farmers jumped into vegetable and berry farming, and their truck farms were profitable. They sold produce in Seattle, at farm stands, and to the east coast.

In 1930 there were about 200 Japanese families farming in the White/Green River valley. In 1942 during WW II all Japanese people in the White/Green River Valley were ordered evacuated from this area and were detained at the War Relocation Camp at Tule Lake, California. They lost their businesses, farms and personal belongings. They lost everything in the war hysteria.

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered them jailed with Executive Order 9066, designating certain "military areas" as zones from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This shameful national act ordered the removal of all people of Japanese ancestry from the entire Pacific coast. In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this law, saying it is permissible to curtail the civil rights of a racial group when there is a "pressing public necessity." I don't know if that decision still stands or not. Maybe this is the precedent we use for locking up various Muslims and people of middle-eastern extraction.

The forced removal encompassed about 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans--3/5 of them U.S. citizens. They were sent to shoddily constructed camps called "War Relocation Centers" in remote portions of the nation's interior. . .far away from where they might have, say, used a flashlight to guide a fleet of Japanese bombers toward the Boeing warplane plant.

My mother, Betty Brummet, remembers Japanese American kids being rounded up at Ballard High School one day. Some of the students lined up and booed.

The phrase "shikata ga nai" (loosely translated as "it cannot be helped") summarized the interned families' resignation to their helplessness. This was even noticed by the children, as mentioned in Farewell to Manzanar. The Japanese citizens tended not to make waves.  They even, incredibly, still believed in America.

Dust storm at an internment camp a/k/a relocation center

In our war hysteria, we didn't want any Japanese Americans near the west coast. They would form cells and assist soldiers and pilots from the motherland in attacking The Pacific Coast. The number of Germans and Italians placed in the camps is only a fraction of their total population compared with the Japanese, virtually all of whom were locked up.

After the war only about thirty families returned to the valley area. I remember the Miyoshis, Yamadas, Nakaharas, Koyamatsus, Hiranakas, and Okimotos. Some of them got back into farming (not on their old farms, which had been confiscated and sold). I worked on the Yamada's farm a couple of springs, cutting and boxing rhubarb, and I worked for a couple of weeks on Kart Funai's farm one summer, bunching radishes and scallions.

In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed legislation awarding formal payments of $20,000 each to the surviving internees—60,000 in all. This same year, formal apologies were also issued by the government of Canada to Japanese Canadian survivors, who were each repaid the sum of $21,000 Canadian dollars. President Ronald Reagan even apologized on behalf of the United States. $21,000 would buy a fraction of the hundreds of acres of stolen land. Sure, it's better than the reparations paid to the families of slaves (zero, to date), but a pittance compared to losing everything you owned, and the farms you nurtured. If they held on until now, they'd all be rich.

Through the 1950's the Green River continued to flood the valley floor in late spring. This is what made the valley floor some of the richest soil in the world. . .but, alas, flooding prevented big business from locating there. In 1963 the Army Corps of Engineers built the Howard Hansen Dam (an earthen dam, still protecting the valley from floods) to regulate the river waters. The danger of uncontrolled flooding ended. The flat, treeless land on the valley floor now was an attractive area for business. And build they did.

Boeing built an aerospace lab, and the floodgates were opened. Farming was over, and dwindled rapidly, although there are a few pockets left. One of my old high school mates has in fact, become a wealthy vegetable farmer. Of the Japanese kids I knew in school, virtually none remained in Kent after high school. Of course, neither did I nor most of my friends, although some of our families still live there.

Sources:
Two previous articles on All This Is That

The Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

The History of Kent, Washington: http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/curriculum/vtours/kent/

Japanese Relocation Centers: http://www.infopleaseinfoplease.com/spot/internment1.html

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