San Diego opened its doors at Balboa Park and hosted an absolutely fabulous Christmas Party and Celebration. I arrived at 4:30 PM transported by city sponsored transportation. We were instructed to park at any of the satellite parking locations and were picked and chauffeured over to the entrance to Balboa Park And they were not just any old transpiration buses. They were polished, beautiful inside with even video screens throughout playing a Christmas Movie. I was needless say really impressed with the wonderful way the city organized this. That was my first impression and the city was batting 100% so far.
When I got to the park, I was impressed with how beautifully it was dressed up for the holidays.The celebration was so outstanding it is going to take several blog posts to get it all in here.
I have so much enthusiastic praise for the city and the marvelous Christmas Celebration, I am almost at a loss for words as I begin to describe and then visually supplement what all they have planned for a true city wide celebration. I took over 300 photos and numerous videos so that I could share this amazing and huge event that encompassed the entire park, all the museums, vendors, productions and the presentations that were all 1st class.
You have all read some of San Diego posts and how I feel about this amazing city and what it provides the fortunate citizens that live here and even our tourist visitors. I will be bringing forward a couple more posts about this wonderful Holiday party where everyone is invited. The Christmas Nights , A Christmas Celebration in the Park, runs for two nights, last night and tonight. They expect and are planning on even more people tonight and attendance for the two day will exceed 300,000.
I was so delightfully pleased with every detail and the work that went into planning this grand event. The entertainment was totally wonderful, the atmosphere was amazing and the museums -well all I can say is that for those of us that live here, we are really blessed with world class culture.
This grand park is home to so many museums and they were all open to the public and and totally free to the guests ( everyone who lives in or is visiting San Diego was invited. ) What an opportunity. I was also surprised that they welcomes me to take pictures in public area of the museum . So I took about 100 or so and will share a couple of fun pieces that conveys the character of these outstanding museums.
These pictures were in the Grand Hall of the Natural History museum but I have so many more photos I am planning on doing the Museums by night and show how wonderful they are.
So I wanted to show some of the really festive lighting and the the many areas filled will Holiday Magic. Here is a small sample of some of the festive lighting on the buildings and all through the park.
I wrote several posts about this idea and I am delighted to report that our Mayor Jerry Sanders has proposed for the San Diego City Council to approve an affordable solution to cutting energy costs here in San Diego.
I had first heard about this idea in the editorial pages many months ago when one enlightened citizen suggested that San Diego should do what was proposed at that time in the city of Berkley. To have the city/county amortize the cost of installing residential solar systems and fronting the upfront costs with loans repaid by the homeowner over a 20 year period through it's property tax bills. The amortized cost averages out for San Diego citizens at about $150.00 per month. That is further offset by a 30% federal solar tax credit and with dramatically reduced energy bills.
One has to love this city and the open mindedness of our mayor and city leaders for realizing that this is a perfect plan and one that will reduce a lot of pressure on the need for output of energy, all the while being a clean and renewable form energy.
When I read this today in our paper, it pleased the heck out me and I can see that the citizens of our wonderful city are so lucky to have leaders that think out of the box.
If you would like to read about this great plan- (click on the link at the beginning of this post) it is mirroring the same plan as was recently approved in Berkeley and also I read a plan like this has implemented in Palm Desert. But what makes this so unusual is that San Diego has over 3 million citizens and is the 6th largest city in the US . If we can do it , then it will set the course for many cities across the country to emulate and that is a very good thing.
I remember when I wrote the first post, Joan Mirantz ,one of our wonderful ActiverRain members asked about how she could get information about it and that it would be a good model for other cities to be able to model a plan after. We all need to pitch in and make this happen country wide.
Personally I am delighted that once again, San Diego will stand as a beacon for being a visionary city and a model for the whole country. We aren't first of course but because of our size, we can demonstrate that this plan will work anywhere and being a big city is no longer an obstacle.
Finally, San Diego got some rain. Over 2 inches of it in most places. But don't let this lull you into thinking that the need for water conservation has somehow ended. It hasn't.
The reservoirs are very low, there are going to be cutbacks in the supply of water we purchase, the water rates are going up again and we will not be able to fill the need for water.
So what does all this mean to you the consumer here in San Diego? It spells the greater possibility of M-A-N-D-A-T-O-R-Y water restrictions.
For a lot of years running, San Diego, in fact all of California's population has been exploding. Developments of every sort are filling up the land. People have been migrating in large numbers to California. Meanwhile, we haven't added one sustainable drop of water to the supply.
It has to strike you ( sooner, if not later ) that with our droughts and no other means for water, at some point there won't be enough to spread around. Thinking you might need to shower with bottled water from Costco? Not going to happen. Beside those poly-whatever kind of bottles are piling up in the landfills and they are not biodegradable. But they are made of chemicals aren't they? Disaster looms on that issue but that is another post for another time. Back to the water shortage and the need for conservation.
There are ways to cut back on consumption voluntarily, if there is any hope of stretching supplies. So it's either we do it voluntarily or it will be mandated. The former would be preferable to having your water supplies cut off or greatly curtailed.
Here are 10 easy ways to help you curtail excessive water usage.
From now until January 9th, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced that they are suspending foreclosures, pending the full implementation of a streamlined loan modification program. Loan mods as they are known, is the process by which a homeowner can "workout" a mortgage that better suites their income and ability to pay.
The new streamlined loan modification process is scheduled to begin around the middle of December and they are expected to ultimately prevent hundreds of thousands of foreclosures over time. But during this holiday period, Fannie Mae estimates 10,000 homeowners and Freddie Mac estimates another 6,000 homeowners will be helped by this suspension of foreclosures. This temporary suspension will give Fannie, Freddie and programs like New Hope along with approximately 27 other mortgage services ,time to get the streamlines process guidelines fully worked out and then to quickly begin implementation.
Foreclosure attorneys for both Fannie and Freddie were advised to contact as many homeowners as possible that were scheduled for foreclosure sale between Thanksgiving and Jan9th of this suspension and that no evictions were to take place at all during this period.
The simplified guidelines as we understand them for the modification process will be for those homeowners that are currently occupying their home and that are behind at least 3 months on their mortgage payments and have not already filed for bankruptcy protections. The other details will be announced when ready.
This action to suspend the foreclosures for the 6 week holiday period will give at least some relief for providing an opportunity to many of these homeowners to qualify for a loan modification. Not to mention the emotional relief of being able to remain in their homes over the holidays.
In other related news, it was reported here in San Diego county that Foreclosures in October had dropped 37% from September. According to the research team for Data Quick, the state senate bill that was signed into law in July but became effective in September, requires that lenders do more to try and help homeowners stay in their homes.
Like measures have been passed in many areas around the country and regretfully the results have shown that the slowing in the number of foreclosures is temporary. The loan modifications help with lowering the payments but not with the debt and therein is the problem of why these loan modifications only slow down the process. If the home is worth x and the loan is y, when y exceeds x, most of the long term incentive has disappeared.
Unless property values stop the free fall and begin the slow assent to increasing in value, the longer term issue of these foreclosures will most likely remain with us for some time to come.
Yesterday morning at around 4:30 am, my bed shook with a loud noise and I soon realized that we were having an earthquake. The epicenter was just north of Palomar Mountain in northern San Diego county but usually when we have one that we can actually feel, it is usually out in the desert area. It measured 4.1 on seismic scale.
It didn't last but a few seconds but it was enough to get me up and my day started extra early yesterday. I had some computer work to catch up on so I just made the best of it.
Jeff Dowler did a post the other day , The Big One Happens...., about a preparedness exercise acted throughout California in which millions of Californians participated in preparation for the Big One. ( I think they consider a magnitude of 8 or over as the Big One). It was guestimated that 5 million participated. Now what should we think about the other 28 million plus all the people just visiting that didn't even know about it. On any given day that could be a few million more.
Well this jolt yesterday wasn't it but I also know that once these more sizable earthquakes start there are usually more to follow. Yesterday morning at 9:25AM there was a second one.They call that one an aftershock because it followed a sizable one and it was believed it was a further adjustment of the same plates. And I expect those earth plates that need adjusting periodically are not through just yet. We will see. What is also true is that the quakes go on continuously, nearly every day. It is only when they become more sizable above the 3 level, that we take notice of them. For most people that slept through yesterdays rattler, it was just another none event.
For the many that have never experienced an earth tremor before it has an eerie feeling surrounding it as the ground rolls and things just bounce up in the air. In the more robust adjustments, pictures can be knocked from the walls and accessories and things in cabinets move and sometimes just fall out of the cabinets. It takes a pretty good jolt before people usually take notice.
In the most serious tremors, the land can roll in mounds a number of feet in the air ( one can not hardly imagine this especially if you haven't witnessed it yourself ) and of course what's sitting on it begins to break apart, like our last big quake, in Northridge in 1994. These quakes are part of the risk one agrees to, to live in the land where the sun shines most of the year around and temperatures are mostly warm but moderate all year. With magnificent coastline and dramatic topography, it is difficult to believe that it could ever change, if just for a moment in time as the earth's crust begins to crack under stress.
The Big One is forecast sometime within the next few decades or so. And one can not be too prepared for that inevitability. But I dare say most are not prepared and it is not like there is going to be some notice somewhere that the big one is on its way like we have come to expect with a a hurricane. When it hits, it hits and everything else will be history from then on, not a forecast. In the last quake in Northridge my nephew who lived in Northridge as his home literally crumbled and he and his family could only helplessly watch.
With California's new seismic retrofit standards, many highways and bridges and public buildings have been re-fortified. But there are plenty of all those structures that have not been and for even those that have been, please understand that there is no written guarantee that goes with them that you will be safe. Being prepared or not is up to each person living here. If the possibility of losing your home or even your life or those of your family is not all that important at least enough to learn how to protect yourself and your belongings, then by all means just go about your business and ignore this intrusion.
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I consider San Diego an excellent place to live and would love to share with you my enthusiasm for the numerous communities that encompass it. Looking forward to working with you. CA Lic # 01048160
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