An excellent mini-series I highly do NOT recommend to any northern Californians right now...

 Chernobyl

Sonora Pass country

I camped up there for a couple of nights last week. The high country along the Pacific Crest Trail is now pretty desolate, the snow largely gone, but the rocks, lichens, and chilly blue lakes remain impressive. Little plants eke out a living, including thistles, gentians, and Whitney's milkvetch (Astragalus whitneyi), a prostrate legume that produces peas in a funny ballon-shaped pod. 

Down the hill to the west, a hike from Kennedy Meadows to Relief Reservoir is a nice workout up a Yosemite-worthy granitic canyon, carved by tributaries of the Middle Fork Stanislaus River. The reservoir itself, filled behind a 1910 dam and part of PG&E's hydroelectric system, is in a spectacular setting, although artificial lakes in beautiful canyons make me sad. The Kennedy Meadows Resort is the kind of place where you see a lot of oversized pickup trucks, enormous RVs, State of Jefferson signs, and not too many masks. I'm sure folks there are friendly. I didn't hang around long enough to find out.

Black-eyed peas

 Freshly shelled, from Full Belly Farms. I like the picture and I like the peas.

Two down, two to go

The Story of a New Name
Elena Ferrante

I finally got around to reading the second of the Neapolitan novels. I didn't like it quite as much as the first, but it is excellent throughout. The personal is political, big time. Once again, Ann Goldstein's translation is so good, you would think it had been written in English.

Your FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

 New England hurricane. Salvaging onions near Hadley, Massachusetts. Sheldon Dick, 1938.

Interview with Amartya Sen

I really cannot recommend this interview/ conversation with Amartya Sen too highly. It is wonderful in its detailed reminiscences about his intellectual upbringing, the place of Marxism in Cambridge economics, the importance of Marx, Arrow, and especially Adam Smith in his thought, name dropping (he actually was friendly with E.M. Forster), the place of philosophy in economics, his prickly intellectual relationship with his thesis advisor– the great economist Joan Robinson– life in India and Indian politics, etc. Throughout, his brilliance, empathy, and humor shine, as well as his false modesty. 

The interview has special resonance for me, perhaps, because during my formative years as a young undergrad economist at the University of Massachusetts in the 1970s, a number of the debates that played out at Cambridge a generation earlier were still raging, such as the so-called Cambridge-Cambridge capital controversy. Sen's takes on most of the matters he discusses seem spot-on to me. His near-reverence for Piero Sraffa, the leading figure of "neo-Ricardian" economics, also struck a chord. I learned much of what I know about Sraffa from an excellent economist who taught me at Stanford, Don Harris (see preceding post). 

Kamala

I think Biden's VP choice is probably second-order in terms of the election outcome. Certainly Kamala checks a number of boxes in terms of gender, ethnicity, and ideology. To me, more than anything she seems like... a Californian! That's a good thing.

Also, her dad taught me neo-Ricardian economics. I don't suppose that will come in handy, but you never know.

Your FSA/OWI Photo of the Day

Circus wagons made by Mr. Whitmarsh. Alger [i.e. Archer], Montana. Russell Lee, 1937