Being located in Dead Central California, and half an hour from the Sierra Nevada,

How many times have I stood on a mountain looking down at the sea of smog with hills poking out like islands in amazement that living people actually spent all their time in that soup!?! An odd amazement, since I too spend most of my time here. But Fresno is an easy place to leave, and in fact for seven months, we have the weather of Eden.
Yet, contrary to the pretty green map, we live in an irrigated desert, and like it or not, no matter how much we would like otherwise, we are a desert people living in the American Southwest.
There are certain rules and concepts that peoples of the desert know and live by, or die. Ho-hum.