El Nino's presence in the Pacific speaks to us again through a night of warm rain. The wind has not blown cold and vengeful out of the north this time around. Yesterday was cool and overcast all day and after the sun allowed its last bit of glowing coal to dissipate from the sky, as I sat indoors hunched over a sandwich at my brother's place in Santa Clara, El Nino had its word with us.

But this morning I peer out the third storey of this building and see the asphalt parking lot below me wet, reflecting an upper atmosphere of gray streaking, mixed half and half with open clear blue. Trees that continue to anticipate their spring adornment stretch their trimmed arms and shoulders straight up, shaped by trainers, soluting their morning work-out routine, waiting for the music to begin.

Though the trees may be awake, the town is sleepy at this hour. A few morning walkers benched under street-car kiosks, clutching umbrellas, watching the sky, hoping their ride is just around the corner. Another busy day of dodging rain drops, another city's day of making meaning out of life by adding in hours of work, maybe an hour or two of play in the luxury moments between the churning tasks that require attention.

I consider a drive in a few days to look at a section of the Sacramento River, wondering whether it may be muddy, or even accessible. I look to the weatherman for advice on whether I should go. This time of year the days can swing with such wild variety. Out of the concoction we call late winter, when first rain, then hot sun, then mountains the next day loaded with snow, something new emerges everywhere that we call spring.

**********

Historian Joseph Amato reflects:

People everywhere live in an increasingly disembodied world, their landscapes and minds increasingly falling under the persuasion and control of abstract agencies and virtual images. Everywhere, place is being superseded and reshaped. Home, locale, community, and region, and the landscape they collectively form, have entered a stage of transformation.

I had never heard of Amato until today, but looked him up on Amazon and immediately bought two of his books after reading the brief descriptions and reviews. They include Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History and Jacob's Well: A Case for Rethinking Family History. He is on to what I have been puzzling over with my journal and my reasons for exploring and attempting to capture some of my ancestor research. I trust that from Amato I will get some better sense of what I am supposed to be writing about. One introductory sentence I read that struck me right away is this idea that telling your family history and/or telling your local history is an antidote to the mass media culture that pervades our society.

The thought of forgotten homes, lost memories, bull-dozed landscapes, divisive freeway and major boulevard systems that carve up communities so that progress has no more off ramps--makes me always think we have lost our minds in this country. But when I try to clear my thoughts and focus my mind on my surroundings, I find it difficult to not be bitter, sardonic, condescending, because it seems like all of society's sensibility is lost. I then wallow in self-pitying diatribes in my journal, and sort of lift off into the air with small talk about leaves and clouds. Leaves and clouds are nice too, and I like them. But I feel the need to say something else, too, about what seems to me to be important to all us humans, but is lost or is soon to be lost.

I look forward to reading Amato's books when they come. I would like to read what some of his disciples have written, based on their understanding of what he has to say.

I believe this book, Napa: The Transformation of an American Town, by Lauren Coodley, may be one of those books. I looked up Lauren's website from Amazon, which is how I learned of Joseph Amato, as she lifted the above quote from him. She referenced another Napa website http://nvmarketplace.wordpress.com/category/history/
that I was looking at also during the quest for further details about my grandfather. Lauren wrote some history of the city Napa, so probably did some research on Nathaniel Coombs as well, as he was the father of the city, and a strong friend of my gggg grandfather. Together they rode across America to Oregon in the early 1840s, then on to California, where their lives continued to intermingle in many fantastic, historical ways that I am trying to uncover.

My odyssey takes odd turns, which is why, I suppose, I must keep a journal as well as do family research and self-research. It is all somehow magically bundled together, flowing with fresh surprises. There is the me--the self--trying to understand itself through journaling, then the me that is trying to love and appreciate the world around me that looks to philosphers and thinkers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Ruskin, and Gilpin, to help me appreciate what is truly beautiful, then there is the me that wants to understand how I got here and where I came from.

For future reference here is Lauren Coodley's website.

I need the time to read on and see what more she has to say in this book, but I now have four books on order and perhaps two hundred as well that I have not yet read. Picture me buried behind a stack of books for the rest of my life. Maybe that's good...

Oh, and the Amato book I mentioned above titled Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History. I have thought this same subject before, when I first got involved with ancestor study. I came to the conclusion then that "my local history" includes a local area that extends from eastern Washington state down to about the Monterey Bay, because that entire region is filled with much family memory, many travels back and forth with important stopovers in between. This may not be what Amato has in mind, but it's what I have in mind when thinking local.