So Cal Poly has served my father in the early 1920s myself in the middle 1950s our 4 children in the 70s and 80s and 3 of our grandchildren in the 21 century thanks Cal Poly. 

With your imagination you will find me sitting in my dentist “chair of pain” where my childhood days still hold sway in my mind, that there would be a fair amount of pain that I had to look forward to.

But we humans think we have devised better ways to live with Mother Nature that are based on convenience and necessity at the cheapest cost possible so our convenient society can function as though nobody should ever have to sweat or toil.

 It’s now about 2am in the morning and it has stopped snowing. What a relief but calves were still going down, but at a slower pace. We weren’t saving them all as we had a pretty good pile of dead ones. At around 4am Tom and I looked at each other and I said “I think we’re going to get out of this wreck alive and Tom said I think your right partner.” 

Our new neighbors told us that we paid way too much and the rumor was that we would probably go broke, that was 61 years ago. In my mind, as I gaze at the mountain view from our bedroom window, the V6 just keeps getting prettier each year.

My mother rolled her eyes again and said “okay anything for the war effort” as she had just lost one of her three brothers while fighting in Europe. So with a little furniture rearranging and some help from some of his friends at work, it took no time at all and the shop in the garage was now in mom and dad’s bedroom. From time to time I would awake when he would be using his lathe and something was out of round. That's when the clumping sound and vibration would wake everybody up. As for my mother, she was a gamer and never complained as long as it helped the war effort and got our family back to California.

For a brief moment in my life I wanted to be a stunt pilot.

The year was 1945 and the Second World War was just about over, making gasoline and the rationing cards required to buy gas, a little bit easier to come by. I was living with my parents and sister Lorna in Garden City, on Long Island, New York.

What’s important is that we humans decided to throw common sense out the window and not use forest and rangeland experts and those who live in these fire-prone areas to help our lands. Instead, we choose to follow a cartoon character that has now rallied several generations of people into believing that our forests are okay and that it’s up to “we the people” as the only ones that can prevent forest fires which couldn’t be farther from the truth. His name is Smoky Bear and his legacy in California alone, in the last decade are millions upon millions of acres up in smoke, plus thousands of homes and a couple of towns gone and some folks who didn’t get out of the way in time.

I awoke this morning and remembered that it was Zee’s and my 64th wedding anniversary. What came and went in a matter of a minute or so was the idea that Zee and I would go to dinner in Paso Robles then take in a movie. But our daughter Lilly called to say that she was fixing dinner tonight for our anniversary and all of our family, which if the total were to show up there would be about 20.

“I’m just an old lump of coal but I’m going to be a diamond someday.” A line from an old western song but thank god that’s not going to be my fate.

If not, why not! And how does one know if the land is smiling?

…if you want to go to the next dimension and if you're feeling a little less than chipper and need more joy and laughter in your life, go find a shovel and dig up a shovel full of damp dark brown soil, now take a handful and bring it to your nose and as you inhale something happens that you don’t expect the scent of love arrives filling the air and wonderful things begin to happen to your outlook on life.

Bull riding is pure Americana and everybody and all the Bulls who dazzle us with their weekly eight seconds of crowd pleasing dangerous athleticism came away thoroughly satisfied with the way they spent their day.

So here we are. You and I we’ve been unceremoniously plopped down on a planet called Earth. It’s about 24,000 miles in circumference and has had life in one form or another for a few billion years.

I would like to introduce to your readers my wife of 63 years Zee Varian. If you're looking for a cowgirl that was a champion in the show ring for 40 years, who raised and trained all our ranch and show horses, and did most of the cow work on our 20,000 acre ranch, all the while, having and raising four children that have in turn given us nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren, then I’ve got a story for you.

Believe me when I say it’s a lot more fun when you can put the fear of death into a corner of your mind so you know it’s there but it won’t be the determiner of how you spend your day.

Most of us think of magic as the kind you see in Las Vegas where card tricks leave you saying “that’s not possible” and disappearing acts that defy any logical explanation are very popular. Well I want to tell you all about a different kind of magic one that refreshes the body and soul of a person. You need to know a little history of Parkfield.

The other day I was having lunch at the Parkfield Cafe. It was the first Saturday of our New Year and because of my Cowboy style of dress and with a notepad and pen in my shirt pocket. A tourist that was eating his lunch upon seeing me, he got up and wandered over to my table and asked if I might be able to answer a few questions like how long have I lived here, do I own a ranch, the usual questions. But then, he asked if I didn’t mind him asking: “How do you manage your ranch?”

The other day I was having lunch at the Parkfield Cafe. It was the first Saturday of our New Year and because of my Cowboy style of dress and with a notepad and pen in my shirt pocket. A tourist that was eating his lunch upon seeing me, he got up and wandered over to my table and asked if I might be able to answer a few questions like how long have I lived here, do I own a ranch, the usual questions. But then, he asked if I didn’t mind him asking: “How do you manage your ranch?”