Expect to hear a lot about ignition in the next year. No, I don?t mean the rebuilt ignition for the beat up ?68 Cadillac El Dorado up on blocks in your front yard.

I?m referring to the inauguration of the National Ignition Facility next door to me at Lawrence Livermore National Labs in Livermore, California.

Mention California to most people, and images of love beads, tie died T-shirts, and Birkenstocks come to mind. But it is also the home of the hydrogen bomb, which was originally designed amid the vineyards and cow pastures of this bucolic suburb.

The thinking at the time was that if someone accidentally flipped the wrong switch, it wouldn?t blow up San Francisco, or more importantly, Berkeley.

The $5 billion project aims 192 lasers at a BB sized piece of frozen hydrogen, using fusion to convert it to helium and unlimited amounts of clean energy.

The heat released by this process reaches 100 million degrees, hotter than the core of the sun, and will be used to fuel conventional steam electric power plants.

There is no need for a four foot thick reinforced concrete containment structure that accounts for half the construction cost of conventional nuclear plants. The entire facility is housed in a large warehouse.

The raw material is seawater, and a byproduct is liquid hydrogen, which can be used to fuel cars, trucks, and aircraft. If this all sounds like it is out of Star Trek, you?d be right.

I worked with these guys in the early seventies, back when math was used to make things, and before it was used to game financial markets, and I can tell you, there is not a smarter and more dedicated bunch of people on the planet.

If it works, we will get unlimited amounts of clean energy for low cost in about 20 years. Oil will only be used to make plastics and fertilizer, taking the price down to $10 for domestic production only.

The crude left in the Middle East will become worthless. Lumps of coal will only be found in museums, or in jewelry, its original use. If it doesn?t work, it will melt the adjacent Mt. Diablo and take me with it.

If you don?t get your newsletter tomorrow, you?ll know what happened. Now what is this switch for?

It?s another sign of the times when the weekend fruit picker population has doubled by people hard hit by the economy,?looking to save money on food costs.

After driving through miles of undulating brown hills studded with oak trees, passing mile upon mile of horse ranches, rusted out cars, and abandoned mobile homes, you come to Brentwood, the fruit capital of Northern California.

There, thousands of families, half from Asia, harvesting ripe Bing cherries and peaches at the wholesale price of $1 a pound, fruit that normally costs $6 a pound at the supermarket.

It all is a great opportunity to teach young kids the value of hard work, and where their food comes from. Anything you eat in the orchard is free, an old California tradition. No doubt none of these people are counted in the government?s employment statistics. It?s all a sign of the snowballing ?local? food movement, where California has been a leader.

It is all a great deal if you don?t mind having purple fingertips at the end of the day. Just watch out for the cars pulled over on the side of the road on the way home, their occupants puking out all their excess cherries.

In a nod to the 21st century, growers in this Grapes of Wrath industry compile lists of email addresses, and notify their itinerant fruit pickers which crops are ready for harvest via the internet. Also on the calendar this season are grapes, apples, apricots, plums, loquats, nectarines, mandarin oranges, and wheel chair accessible walnuts (?).

At the end of each harvest, professional crews sweep through and pick up what?s left, if the prices will bear it. If you wonder why we put up with the earthquakes, high taxes, gridlocked politics, and a non-functioning state government, this is the reason.

By the way, does anyone know what to do with 50 pounds of cherries? Send me your recipes.