In The Dark

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

The day started with my mom knocking at our door at 6 am because “you were so quiet we thought you’d died.”  While I understand the impulse… they thought we’d died both at once? unlikely.  I think I swore at her, but fortunately she doesn’t understand English, and also I was so sleepy it probably came out as unngggghn.

I have been up about an hour and a half.  Another cold and rainy day to the point I swiped one of mom’s outdoor coats to wear inside.  Agatha Christie says Americans, used to central heating, feel the cold more than Europeans, and she’s not wrong.  It feels wrong to be freezing indoors.

The weather has been drizzly and overcast, which to be fair is normal weather for the North of Portugal. If you wondered at those descriptions of the Napoleonic wars, some of which made it sound like it was a tropical paradise and some of which made it sound like cold and rainy all the time, the answer is “yes.”  In the North it’s cold and rainy and unpleasant until July/August when it’s suddenly very hot, dry, and semi-tropical.

Even so, this year is unusually cool, it seems to me — well, it’s unusually cool at home.   It seems we left under snow the last day of April and will go back to icy rain two weeks into May — which mind you it’s a high in the fifties. It just feels colder because of the rain and the humidity.  Of course, my skin is loving it.

Curiously, looking online some time ago, I found that the region of Maia, thus named by the Romans was initially Maida i.e. “The wet and fertile place.”  As far as early Middle ages, inhabitants called themselves Maidaenses.  I only found this interesting since at least some Indian language calls parks “Maidan” (as it was what the English called it when in India.)

I decided it was a good day to iron, while mom is out shopping, but while I was ironing the electricity went out.  I don’t know if it’s the house or the region, as I can make no sense of their board.  Remember this is the board that was forced on them because it goes down with less use.  For all I know it went down with the ironing board.

One of the things I’ve been noticing here is that all the crazy sh*t Californians dream up is taken like gospel truth is.  I had to fight for table salt, EVEN THOUGH I ALWAYS HAVE LOW BLOOD PRESSURE and actually lose salt (which is how I ended up in the hospital some years ago) and Mom — damn it — knows this, because “Salt will kill you.”

It’s like cargo cult modernity and there’s nothing as “modern” as fracking Cali, so they believe everything that comes out of there as the “new great way to be.”

There is almost nothing low sugar or low carb, but by gum, it’s almost impossible to find a no no-fat yogurt.  This in a country where the ice cream isle is two isles and has stuff never dreamed of in the US.

Guys, we’re going to have to put a silencer on California.  They’re screwing up the rest of the world.

And now I’ll get off line before my computer runs out of charge.

247 thoughts on “In The Dark”

    1. Actually, it’s an invitation to fill in the blank ending. Like this…

      Curiously, looking online some time ago, I found that Robotics, Inc. was still available as a corporate name, and grabbed it. Now, I’m going to start suing the socks off all those people who are using my corporate name without permission. How much do you think I should charge people who want to buy permission? Should I offer a yearly rate and a lifetime rate? Ah, the problems of a corporate identity…

  2. It’s not sunny as summer, but at least it’s not freezing in the Algarve.
    Part of why you freeze indoors is that it’s very humid, a freeze puts the humidity on the ground. Like northern California.
    We have guests, or would offer y’all our apartment/converted garage. Hope y’all have some fun anyway.

  3. Can we send a few (most) politicians over there, without their usual amenities, to experience “Life in the raw”?
    I really think they need the lessons.
    Meanwhile, dad by day for you guys. Ignore the chaffing and remember you won’t have them around too soon.

    1. I was going to say I don’t think they understand life in the US without their usual amenities, but then I remembered they’d probably conclude the answer to that was more socialism.

      Admittedly, there are some people who will never be convinced of any answer that’s not “more socialism.”

      1. The old, “we spent $2 billion and the problem is worse than before we spent anything thus the only logical conclusion is we need to spend $4 billion” mindset.

        1. Well, as long as they can find somebody they approve of who got something out of it, obviously it’s a good thing. Anybody who was harmed in a way they can’t explain away was one of the rich they wanted to eat in the first place.

          1. Think of all the bureaucrats needed t redistribute that money the union dues collected for the benefit of union leaders. Think of all of the campaign contributions and paid volunteers provided to politicians promising to protect that pipeline (the only kind of resource-extracting and distributing pipeline which Progressives endorse.)

        2. One would think that Einstein came up with his definition of insanity (“trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result’) precisely to describe people who believe in socialism.

  4. “Guys, we’re going to have to put a silencer on California.” This is the best idea I’ve heard in years.

    1. I find it interesting she used silencer, not muzzle.

      Because a lot of us are ready to train a silencer on a lot of politicians.

      1. Every time California threatens to secede, my reaction is to quote Dirty Harry Callahan: “Go ahead, make my day.” I wish they would stop talking about it and just leave already.

        1. No!

          Because Salem, Portland, Seattle, and probably Carson and Denver, will take their states with them!!!

          No. Just No.

          1. Nothing to say conservative areas can’t secede from the liberal states that have seceded from the US.

        3. Don’t get too excited when you hear that “California” wants to secede. It’s just a few people who the vast majority of Californians don’t take too seriously.

          That could admittedly change if California politicians turn out to be extremely adroit when handling the illegal immigration issue (and whomever is in the White House completely plays into their hands). But don’t count on it.

  5. Hugs. Yeah, a damp bonechilling cold is no fun. I do not know how people can live in San Francisco, as the climate alone makes it pretty hellish.

    1. I understand San Francisco was a paradise when the population was only a couple of thousand people.

      How come the zero population growth people always want to limit other people, but not themselves?

      1. Yeah, and funny how all the ZPG folks voluntarily congregate in the most congested areas (not just big cities, but downtowns of big cities).

        1. That’s what gives them the delusion — they think the world is like that.

    2. I refer you to the excellent song “I hate the Beach Boys”

      San Francisco is okay, but it’s not reliably cool, damp and foggy.

      The best place is where the cliffs run down to the ocean, and the clouds come down from the sky, and the world is cool and soft and silver, and grey meets grey meets grey

      2. Ah The Bobs, a lovely group and proof that at one time Liberals could actually laugh at themselves (C.F. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlc-Pom0MIw , Please Let Me Be Your Third World Country). I’m not sure that any of the original 4 remain, of course that album is from the early 80’s so what band has the same members after nearly 40 years…

  6. Guys, we’re going to have to put a silencer on California. They’re screwing up the rest of the world.

    Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure………
    After I get 2 sons out of the state…….

    2. Nah. Just dynamite the highways in and out of it. Build a wall around it (Good practice for the Mexico-US wall, and even eliminates the need to put a wall between California and Mexico.

        1. I’m afraid it’s already too late for our neighbors South of the border.

          1. I was startled beyond words when rumors of Trump even THINKING of recognizing our south-neighbors as terrorist filled started going around.

            Not because it’s wrong, but because it’s obvious…and would be a mess.

            Mexico IS a terrorist ruled state. But recognizing it? Oh, my stars and garters…that would be a can of worms, and would likely gut the Dem party, to START with. (Insane cash involved, there.)

            1. I admit to being gob-smacked that no prior administration had recognized the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as terrorists — that should have been done by Reagan, if not Carter. Their aid to Iraqi resistance forces was sufficient to establish a casus belli by pretty much any standard.

              It is likely that their active support in Venezuela has tipped a balance in that country and I can only say: “About damn time.”

              1. considering we got intact IEDs in Iraq that had plastic explosive that was ID’d as manufactured in Iraq….

              3. For those wondering:

                Legal Criteria for Designation under Section 219 of the INA as amended

                It must be a foreign organization.
                The organization must engage in terrorist activity, as defined in section 212 (a)(3)(B) of the INA (8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)),* or terrorism, as defined in section 140(d)(2) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1988 and 1989 (22 U.S.C. § 2656f(d)(2)),** or retain the capability and intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism.
                The organization’s terrorist activity or terrorism must threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security (national defense, foreign relations, or the economic interests) of the United States.
                Legal Ramifications of Designation

                It is unlawful for a person in the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to knowingly provide “material support or resources” to a designated FTO. (The term “material support or resources” is defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(1) as ” any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who maybe or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(2) provides that for these purposes “the term ‘training’ means instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as opposed to general knowledge.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(3) further provides that for these purposes the term ‘expert advice or assistance’ means advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge.’’
                Representatives and members of a designated FTO, if they are aliens, are inadmissible to and, in certain circumstances, removable from the United States (see 8 U.S.C. §§ 1182 (a)(3)(B)(i)(IV)-(V), 1227 (a)(1)(A)).
                Any U.S. financial institution that becomes aware that it has possession of or control over funds in which a designated FTO or its agent has an interest must retain possession of or control over the funds and report the funds to the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
                Other Effects of Designation

                Supports our efforts to curb terrorism financing and to encourage other nations to do the same.
                Stigmatizes and isolates designated terrorist organizations internationally.
                Deters donations or contributions to and economic transactions with named organizations.
                Heightens public awareness and knowledge of terrorist organizations.
                Signals to other governments our concern about named organizations.
                Revocations of Foreign Terrorist Organizations

                The Immigration and Nationality Act sets out three possible basis for revoking a Foreign Terrorist Organization designation:

                The Secretary of State must revoke a designation if the Secretary finds that the circumstances that were the basis of the designation have changed in such a manner as to warrant a revocation;
                The Secretary of State must revoke a designation if the Secretary finds that the national security of the United States warrants a revocation;
                The Secretary of State may revoke a designation at any time.
                Any revocation shall take effect on the date specified in the revocation or upon publication in the Federal Register if no effective date is specified. The revocation of a designation shall not affect any action or proceeding based on conduct committed prior to the effective date of such revocation.

                1. “Heightens public awareness and knowledge of terrorist organizations.”

                  If I read that right (or if a Fe(de)ral prosecutor wants to so interpret it), merely reporting neutrally on terrorist activity (as opposed to promoting, lauding, or ‘supporting’ it) could get one’s (anatomical appendages) in a wringer since it could be construed as “Heighten(ing) public awareness . . .”. That seems to me to be problematical on First Amendment grounds, as it seems to violate prohibitions on restrictions on freedom of speech and of the press. (See, I’m *not* only interested in the Second Amendment. 🙂 )

                  1. That’s not a thing that gets you in trouble, it’s a desired effect. Guess the “other effects of designation” and similar titles are pictures. (seriously, what IS it with gov’t web pages?)

                    Material support or resources are the forbidden thing.

                    Here’s the whole “legal ramifications” section:
                    It is unlawful for a person in the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to knowingly provide “material support or resources” to a designated FTO. (The term “material support or resources” is defined in 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(1) as ” any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who maybe or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(2) provides that for these purposes “the term ‘training’ means instruction or teaching designed to impart a specific skill, as opposed to general knowledge.” 18 U.S.C. § 2339A(b)(3) further provides that for these purposes the term ‘expert advice or assistance’ means advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge.’’
                    Representatives and members of a designated FTO, if they are aliens, are inadmissible to and, in certain circumstances, removable from the United States (see 8 U.S.C. §§ 1182 (a)(3)(B)(i)(IV)-(V), 1227 (a)(1)(A)).
                    Any U.S. financial institution that becomes aware that it has possession of or control over funds in which a designated FTO or its agent has an interest must retain possession of or control over the funds and report the funds to the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

              4. In other news …

                Trouble for CNN over terror nation ties to TV analysts
                A report highlighted by Donald Trump Jr. that some CNN national security analysts have undisclosed ties to a Middle Eastern nation that sponsors terrorism threatens to undercut the network’s support among Democrats and independents, according to a new survey.

                A poll of six battleground states found that likely voters, especially Democrats, believe the report, the latest evidence that President Trump’s attacks on CNN have had an impact.

                The survey from WPA Intelligence came after Conservative Review revealed the undisclosed ties of CNN national security “regulars” to Qatar, a sponsor of terrorism.

                [END EXCERPT]

                Didn’t it turn out that Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi “journalist” murdered in Istanbul last year, was closely in league with the Qataris? As in, a Qatari asset and member of the Muslim Brotherhood? I also am reminded that the Qataris are the single largest foreign donor to the Brookings Institution.

                Looking at the flow of money from the Saudis, Qataris and other Middle Eastern petrogarchies into American political culture sorta puts “Russian Interference In American Elections” into perspective, don’t it? Seems like the kind of thing the MSM would get all het up over.

      1. Separating California from the rest of the U.S., and wiping out the travesty of Chris Christy’s state? Yeah, in hindsight, Alexander Luthor would have done us all a favor. Wouldn’t THAT make an interesting alternate Superman story!

        1. Of course that’s one of the plot devices in the Watchmen. Heroes killed and framed, and several hundred thousand people killed to prevent a far worse nuclear war.

          The closest parallel I can think of would be someone being forced to kill their own child to stop them from killing the rest of the entire family. Talk about a Greek Tragedy!

  7. Silencers are specifically illegal in california.

    Huh, suddenly the whole reeeeee’ing mess starts to make a little more sense.

    1. First we need to set up the Ayn Rand deprogramming center, with hourly readings of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead at the point we intend to evacuate people through.

      I know they are friends and relatives, but we need to decontaminate everyone leaving a diseased zone even if they show no symptoms.

      2. While I still inhabit the big toe of the beast, and therefore don’t favor nuking us from orbit, I do endorse Glenn Reynold’s welcome wagon idea to deprogram Californians as they flee to infect other states like they’ve already done to Oregon, Washington, and Colorado.

        1. Yes. Unfortunately, the wall needs to come up the bone of the Cascades, and the Coast Range, in Oregon and Washington, with a bulge east to pull in Bend, and bulge west to encompass Astoria; not sure what eastern enclaves might need fencing in Washington. Then fencing in the entire state of Colorado provides additional problems. OTOH by the time the fencing was completed, the Mexican border wall would be easy.

          2. Counting how? My father was born in New York but my mother was born in Connecticut — and I can definitely go back three by the right branch.

            1. Ditto. Counting how?

              First generation through Mom. Her folks came to Oregon via Colorado from Montana after WWII.

              Through dad, 5th generation through his mother (Frank Applegate, one of Jesse’s sons is dad’s great-grandfather, Frank came on the wagon train with his father and family as a child), but only 4 through his grandfather (from Scotland via Canada.) Not sure about his dad but pretty sure at least 4, maybe 5 generations.

              At this point, I’d settle for “born in the state.”

      3. My first thought was “You can read Atlas Shrugged in an hour?!?”

        Perhaps I just need sleep…

        2. Simply get the Audible edition (62 hours, 56 minutes) and speed up the playback to slightly over 60:1 (there is a slightly briefer reading, clocking in at 52 hrs and 20 mins, but who wants to listen to a reader who eliminates the pauses?)

          1. I thought you were kidding.

            Then I looked.

            It really is a 63 hour audio book.

            That’s 6 weeks commute both ways if traffic is slow.

            1. It is indeed remarkable. I believe it is the longest single novel Audible offers.

              Dickens’ Bleak House, by comparison, is a mere 43 hrs and 12 mins. David Copperfield (currently on sale for the low, low price of $0.47) runs 56 hrs and 6 mins. Gone with the Wind blows past in just 49 hrs and 2 mins. The Lord of the Rings only wants 54 hrs and 6 mins for all three books – including the notes & appendixes at the end. Dumas’ The Count of Monte Christo ($1.99, although if you act quickly and will accept a hasty reading in just 53 hrs and 49 mins you can buy it on sale for $0.47) will require only 57 hrs and 20 mins (58 hrs and 54 mins if you want it read in Italian.)

              All three books of Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga are read in 42 hrs and 35 mins!

              Stephen Fry reads Sherlock Holmes (Compleat), in just 62 hrs and 52 mins. That’s four novels, five short story collections and “nine insightful, intimate and deeply personal introductions to each title.”

              As in real life, Rand requires COMMITMENT and if you follow her philosophy you ought to be committed.

      4. I’m not sure if that would work. Ms. Rand made her points with all the subtlety of falling anvils.
        Readings from Adam Smith would work better.

        1. If by “anvils” you mean the barges of moon rock described by Heinlein …

          The problem with reading Adam Smith to them is few have sufficient education to understand his linguistic form. Remember, many most today read at no more than an Eighth Grade level, and that is contemporary Eighth Grade, likely comparable to Fourth Grade reading in Smith’s time.

          1. There’s no math. That’s both a “but” and an “and”. It would probably be 50% shorter if he used a few equations. Also, “corn” is the English word for “grain”, not just “maize”. That really confused me. In the pre-internet days, how did one look up the Corn Laws of the 1300s? It couldn’t possibly be maize in the 1300s, so it must have been _something_ else. I finally just figured it out from context.

        2. Milton Friedman’s _Capitalism and Freedom_. Shorter, more modern English, but packs a lot into each essay.

    2. Move to by-county voting.

      Cheating is less valuable when you have to take over A TON of places to hijack a state.

      2. The sonic energy from the resulting reeees would crack Yellowstone wide open. Not sure that is a good trade.

        On the other hand….. we wouldn’t need to care about California anymore. Hmmmmmmm…….

      3. Great idea.

        The SCUS of the US has declared it unconstitutional, at least with reference to state upper houses have seats apportioned to counties instead of even population districts.

  8. The moderns in general are not impressive when compared to the cargo cults.

  9. As a Californian – native, and not crazy – I apologize for the idiocy of the imports. (At least the ones I notice are all imports.)

    1. I recall noticing in the Sixties and Seventies that the type of people I observed being drawn to California were, generally speaking, the type of people other states were well rid of. Who knew there were so many people in pursuit of a diet of lotus blossoms?

      2. If you’re going to San Francisco, Be sure to wear a flower in your hair….bleccch! (And make sure not to step on needles or human fecal deposits as you gaze adoringly at the glitz and technoglamour of Silicon Valley, living in the worst over-priced housing in the USA).
        The “Summer of Love” has a lot of answer for in how much long-term damage it did to American culture. Once the counter-culture became, through media and marketing pressures, part of mass culture awareness and acceptance, then along came the 70s, the decade that taste forgot.

        1. Ayup – plenty of blame to spread about, but I think the worst culprits may have been the Beach Boys — not just their songs but even their album covers established an irresistible attraction.

          I wonder whether the other states could sue California for creating an attractive nuisance?

          1. Perhaps we could bring suit for Alienation of Affection on behalf of the Constitution?

    2. The older ones are usually imports, but thanks to the duration of this trend some of them have given birth to new idiots. Having grown up in New Jersey, and with relatives in Florida, I am quite familiar with this phenomena. As I now live in Ohio, I get to experience the opposite trend, sending out idiots to Florida and California. (Though many non-idiots seem headed to Florida as well as destinations like Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Arizona, etc.)

  10. There was a school shooting at Highlands Ranch south of Denver earlier this week. One dead, eight wounded. National coverage by the usual suspects of course. Reason I mention it is video from a copter showed the ground to be snow covered.
    You probably won’t hear anything about the incident by the time you get back. Once it was reported that the 18 year old shooter hated Trump and his minor accomplice was transitioning from female to male all coverage suddenly went away.
    I guess gatekeepers don’t reside exclusively in publishing don’t you know.

    2. I wondered why this dropped off the news radar.

      Only thing I’ve been able to find is the two hand guns involved were legally purchased by a parent. Unknown how they ended up in the students hands. Nor news of which student (older or younger.) Personally guessing they were properly secured or the press would be beating the parent to death.

      Also, nothing about whether either or both were bullied. Again, press would be making victims of them not the STEM students targeted. Guessing it is a mental health issue with both of them. Just based on how fast it was dropped, and lack of information.

      All guesses, speculation …

      1. If the accomplice was ‘trans’, then he is probably some flavor of LGBT, and if so as a result of promotion by the school systems, both probably should count as mentally ill.

        Sex and social bonding are strongly associated with mental health. You can find homosexual couples which are stable and reasonably sane by our standards here. It is not clear that occurrence of pairing with mental stability is the same in cohorts whose behavior is formed with homosexuality promoted almost in exclusion of heterosexuality as it was in cohorts whose behavior was formed when homosexuality was heavily stigmatized.

        More explicitly, I was just on the edge of being exposed to the newer claptrap growing up. My problems and personal oddness were ones that people these days would take as evidence for being LGBT. I am very certain that lots of sex with strangers, or getting bent out of shape about how people perceive me in social situations would not have made me saner.

        The anti-anxiety meds almost certainly at least contributed to Paddock, and are sufficient explanation. There are still people acting like it was necessarily some big mystery. (Okay, the investigation seems like it was strange. It still isn’t inexplicable.) The news media will be unreliable.

        Also, Santa Fe apparently wore an LGBT pin on his hat. It well be that current conditions are favorable for such to turn up associated with a majority of shooters. Like the possibility of under reporting of marijuana use. If a majority of shooters are damaged in some way (and we would expect so, because they aren’t patient and capable enough to do a better job), then we would expect correlation for factors that might be self medication for damage or a contributing cause of damage.

      2. I suspect that part of the reason why it dropped off of the radar was that the kids dealt with the shooters before the cops arrived. It’s a bit of an embarassment when the Left’s battlecry of “WAIT FOR THE AUTHORITIES TO SAVE YOU!” turns out to be unnecessary.

        1. Refusing point blank to be props in a Democratic Party rally is another factor.
          Too bad they didn’t tar, feather, and run those damn carpetbaggers out of the school on a rail.

          1. Walked out. Then walked back in and took over. The politicians didn’t get tared and feathered but they did get pushed out of the way. They went away with a whimper.

            Surprised Sarah didn’t hear the political scream all the way to Portugal.

            Come on. These were STEM students. What they expect? Patsy’s?

            1. “What they expect? Patsy’s?”

              Yes. That is what contemporary pedagogy is supposed to produce.

              Their literature classes aren’t giving the kids The Sackett Brand, or even Shane; they’re giving them The Handmaid’s Tale.

              1. “Their literature classes aren’t giving the kids The Sackett Brand, or even Shane; they’re giving them The Handmaid’s Tale.”

                Well that may be the required reading. Guessing the STEM literature classes might have alternative reading material … After all the whole target of STEM is to give students critical thinking skills across all aspects of education. Bet everyone screeching for equal access to anyone (correct PC class) who wants it, not taking that into account.

        2. I think those kids got both of the lessons to be learned from the Parkland Shooting: don’t count on the cops to rescue you and don’t let the Gun-Grabbers use you as human shields for their agenda.

          1. There’s still a guy over on Instapundit trying to use them.

            Ignoring that the kids have to worry about this BECAUSE of the gun grabbers, he wants to ban guns even more.

        3. I have actually seen tut-tuttery about lionizing the heroes who stop shootings. It encourages risky behavior!

            1. What warped priorities. What are a few dozen dead next to the damage to the Narrative?

    3. I didn’t hear ANYTHING about it until I ran into a memorial for the dead kid–
      he charged the shooter.

      Which has become increasingly common, thus dropping the death counts through the floor.

      Makes me want to arm the kids so they’ll be more effective in destroying these monday-friday terrorists.

        1. Yeah, the STEM shooting will disappear for the same reason Hodgkinson’s trying to shoot all the GOP House members did: The two kids were way Left, virulently anti-Christian, and smashed their parents’ gun cabinets to get firearms.

          In addition, one of them was in the middle of transitioning from female to male and had just started hormone therapy. Can we say “‘Roid rage” from the wrong dose of testosterone in a body already going through puberty? I think we can.

      3. With the predictable result that the usual suspects are whining that we’re glorifying 14 year old heroes to avoid doing something about the GUNZZZZZ.

        1. And going oddly silent when you point out that the kids are put in that position because of the screecher’s prior attempts to “do something about guns.”

    5. https://www.yahoo.com/news/1-dead-8-injured-shooting-103541254.html

      I don’t know if you’ll be able to see it but the article was very detailed; the 18 year old shooter hated Trump and Christians (and apparently was gay, according to a different article) and the minor was a female to male transgender.

      And yes, there is mention of the students being angry that this was being politicized by anti-gunners, and that there’s virtually no mention of the heroic students who jumped the shooters.

      1. It is important to keep in mind that what these folk deem an attack can be nothing more than not allowing them to dictate reality. They can be “threatened” by your refusal to pay obeisance to their agenda. Any claims of Christian bullying must be taken with appropriate numbers of grains of salt.

        1. Hell, honestly? Simply treating them like everyone else and not especially acknowledging someone’s homosexuality/or transgender identity (but using their preferred pronouns, just not treating them extra special) is an ‘attack’ to some.

          The mere refusal to bow obeisance is enough.

          1. This gentle reminder brought to you by the gentle folk of Canada:

            The New Family Violence
            Family violence can take many forms,” says Madam Justice Marzari of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, including “unreasonable restrictions or preventions of a family member’s personal autonomy.” To be more specific, “family violence” can now take the form of refusing to accept a family member’s chosen gender identity. Such is the violence inflicted on a fourteen-year-old girl (referred to as AB) who is determined to be a boy, by her father (dubbed CD), who insists she is no such thing.

            The court will not stand idly by, insists Justice Marzari, knowing that AB is “harmed by the fact that it is his own father, whom he loves, who appears to be publicly rejecting his identity, perpetuating stories that reject his identity, and exposing him to degrading and violent commentary in social media” (A.B. v. C.D. and E.F., 2019 BCSC 604, par. 72). Under Justice Bowden, it has “already determined that it is a form of family violence to AB for any of his family members to address him by his birth name, refer to him as a girl or with female pronouns (whether to him directly or to third parties), or to attempt to persuade him to abandon treatment for gender dysphoria” (par. 21). And now it means to enforce its embargo on such behavior by permitting the arrest without warrant of CD, should he give the least appearance of persisting in this violence.

            We will return later to the matter of “degrading and violent” commentary. For the moment, please note that “treatment for gender dysphoria” means—at a minimum—the application of opposite-sex hormones, with their permanent effects on AB’s body. It certainly does not mean trying to get at the root causes in her soul—alienation from a parent, perhaps?—through any kind of cognitive therapy. That sort of thing qualifies these days as degrading and violent “conversion therapy,” a label applied in Orwellian fashion to any procedure that might call into question a sexual orientation or gender identity claim; any procedure, that is, which risks reversing a SOGI conversion. In a number of jurisdictions, approaches with that sort of risk have become illegal. …

            … Far from protecting AB from violence through the exercise of its parens patriae power, the court itself is engaged in violence against AB, aiding and abetting those who have encouraged her to rebel against her own body in a vain attempt to find the peace her soul needs. This ruling attacks not merely one parent and one child, but every parent and every child. For the very idea of the family perforce disappears where personal autonomy is construed in such a fashion that the sexed body is of no account. If the sexed body is of no account, neither is reproduction or parenting or filiation. And if it is now “family violence” to refuse to accept a gender identity claim, violence of a sort the law can forbid and punish, it will follow soon enough that it is violence for anyone to refuse to accept that claim, and that this too can be punished. The court’s parens patriae power will extend to everyone (a point I made in Nation of Bastards). It will be universal in its reach.

            [END EXCERPT]

            The Court rules there are five lights.

            1. Trans has replaced Gay as the cause du jure amongst the liberal progressive crowd. What scares the living carp out of me is this propensity for far too many so called child advocates to embrace this new trendy concept whole heartedly, fully supporting troubled adolescents in their desires to be something other than what they were born to.
              If you are a grownup, call yourself what you will, dress as you please as long as it doesn’t scare the horses as they used to say, but these so called advocates enabling minor children to get drug and hormone treatments that will permanently affect their future adult bodies, often without the consent or even knowledge of their parents, is in my considered opinion the worst sort of child abuse.
              I feel somewhat similar towards parents who jump on the trendy bandwagon and brag of raising their own children in a similar twisted fashion. I fear that the Canadian father’s case is merely a precursor for what we will be seeing here.

              1. They’ve been promoting child sex for decades, not caring about how their pro-abortion without parental consent goals actively enable long term sex abuse.

                Why would they start to care about the physical and mental effects of their more-extreme-than-you posing now?

              2. It has, of course, nothing to do with what is of benefit to children or even adults, straight, gay, trans or whatever else. It has everything to do with 1) demonstrating moral superiority 2) pushing society to change, without regard to the social cost or benefit.

                The second is critical, because their purpose is to find a basis for condemning society at large. They never believed the Gay Acceptance push would topple barriers as readily as they did, not realizing that the more of society’s hedgerows they hew down, the lesser the resistance to the winds of change. They do not, of course, realize the blowback that will inevitably occur (some would look at the Islamist and White Supremacist movements and say is already occurring.)

                1. “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”

                  Maybe SJWs could have learned something from Robert Bolt, despite him being a dead white male.

                2. POWER.

                  Let us not forget the importance of POWER.

                  So what if they are now telling lesbians that if they don’t put out on a demand for a man they are transphobic? That’s the way to more POWER.

          2. The old “we want to be treated like everyone else and not made to feel separate because of our special thing” that goes away they get it and they feel slighted because you didn’t highlight their special thing.

      2. Redstate has an article about the father of the accessory. Twice deported as an illegal.

        A) birthright citizenship B) mother was a US national, but it really makes you have the warm fuzzies about anchor baby status.

  11. Hmm. I wonder whether you are perhaps being a bit hard on your natal country.

    Portugal strikes me as a second world country trying, however fumblingly, to join the first world.

    California is a second world country (formerly first world) trying, with great determination, to transform themselves into a third world country.

    1. I don’t think I’m being hard on them. I just wish they wouldn’t buy into the crap that comes from the US and try to follow what our crazies think will save the environment. I mean, they already got rid of most their cows.

      2. Can’t be any worse than British kids doing the whole MTV-hood-gangbanger schtick, complete with ranting in Ebonic ghettoese.

        They could choose to be anyone they wanted. Yet they chose that…

    2. Remember that “second world” originally designated the commies, with “third world” used for non-aligned countries (who were generally so because they were poor as shit).

      So California is a first world country passing through third on the way to second.

      1. Right, the terms originate with the Three Worlds Theory of Mao. There are other theories and names for divisions of nations, like core and periphery, which derives from the theories of Wallerstein (who lives next door to relatives of mine).

        1. Topic For Discussion:

          Would you rather live in the Second World or the Third?

          I think Third is probably preferable: living in the Second virtually guarantees Third World conditions eventually, but a Third World nation might (e.g., Chile) improve.

          1. Since I live in the 3rd world, yeah, better that than the argus eyed oppression of the Communist.
            At least you can still get toilet paper and food.

          2. Where, when, and with what resources makes a big difference. In the here and now? China as an American with money? Hungary, in the last few years before the fall of Communism? Czechoslovakia immediately after the crushing of the Prague Spring? Brazil as an American with money? Brazil as a peon?

      2. Like “left” and “right,” there are many different continuums where the terms “first,” “second,” and “third” are applied.

        The one you cite is the geopolitical continuum. Mine is more the social/economic continuum – from legal and opportunity equality at one end to aristocrats and peasants at the other.

  12. CPAPs & APAPs aren’t that quiet. What, was she worried by a “sudden” lack of snoring? Or was that just a convenient excuse, bearing no relation to reality? *sigh*

    Here’s to you getting a nice nap, and plenty of painkillers – because nothing inflames joints like a carb overload after low-carb diet, and nothing aggravates inflamed joints like a damp cold.

    I love my office job so much, precisely because it isn’t kneeling on the ramp in a puddle (they always park the airplane in a puddle if it needs maintenance. If they don’t, nature will contrive to make it in a puddle by the time you can work on it), in 36 degree rain, looking at reddish fluid on my knuckles and going “I can’t tell if that’s rain-diluted blood or hydraulic fluid. Or both. Because I can’t feel my fingers.”

    …there are days I really miss Alaska. There are days when I remember that, and really love Texas.

      1. My first two were noisy. The ResMed (automatic, and it spends most of its time near 6cm, vs the 12 or 15cm the earlier ones had) tends to be pretty quiet.

    3. > quiet

      Mine is. Or maybe I’m just deaf enough I don’t hear it.

      Though if the mask gets dislodged at night it makes some loud and disgusting flatulent sounds, though…

      1. I don’t have the hose strapped to go up, so it can swivel. This also means on rare occasions I’ve knocked it off the mask when changing positions. That’ll wake up people (and dogs…)

    4. Last aircraft maintenance job I had, you could tell the difference – Skydrol is purple, and it *burns*.

    5. not always in a puddle.
      sometimes it’s downwind from the lav truck dump point, or if it is August, the one spot that never gets wind but always gets the sun , , , with the tail over an underground Yellow Jackets nest

  14. Is it odd of me to think of The Environment as something which will persist in spite of whatever humans or gods do? Might not be hospitable to human life, but The Environment is indifferent to us and, terminologically, will persist to be even if the Earth explodes. “Save the Environment” seems like “Save the square root of negative one” in my ears (which are recognized to be quite capacious.)

    2. The Environment was around long before dinosaurs, and will be arund for a very long time yet. We can’t save the Triassic environment… what makes us think we can save this one?

      …Did you know there used to be giant tropical pine-type trees in the extreme northern Canada? It’d take a heck of a lot of global warming to “restore the pristine environment”, eh? Much less removing all the permafrost that took over Siberia about the time the woolly mammoths were wiped out and frozen down hard into it… Has anybody thought about how to do that?

        1. Yep! And given we don’t have the technology to reverse or redirect continental drift, restoring that environment is a heck of a challenge!

          1. Hmmm. Something like a huge lens to focus the sun into a beam strong enough to punch through and cut the continental crust, Then we’d need something to collect sunlight, focus and diffuse it on select spots of various plates to push them in whatever direction we want it to go. Yeah, and just how much global warming with THAT cause? LOL.

          2. We must take Action NOW to Stop Continental Drift!

            Splitting tectonic plate could eventually shrink Atlantic Ocean
            Europe and Canada may one day smash into each other if dramatic new research is to be believed.

            Scientists say one of Earth’s tectonic plates, the massive shelves of crust that carry the continents and seafloor, is gradually splitting apart off the coast of Portugal.

            The rupture may be forming a giant new crack in our planet’s crust, triggering catastrophic earthquakes in the region that may have already claimed 100,000 lives.

            Over the next 200 million years, the split could see two new tectonic plates form and slide over one another, helping to pull Europe and North America together into a single “supercontinent.”

            Scientists at the University of Lisbon identified the underground split in an area southwest of Portugal. …

              1. Seriously, they don’t need to do anything that drastic. All they have to do is make their bridge out of soap.

                2. All they have to do is make their bridge out of soap.

                  .. and they’ll eventually wash themselves ashore?

      2. If you use pollen change as a temperature and precipitation data proxy, the northern Great Plains (ND, SD, MN) went from taiga to grassland in a century once the ice started its final retreat. Now THAT’S global warming. And western Nebraska was a dune field without grass holding it in place.

      3. If we wanted to ‘restore the environment to its original state’ we would have to ban chlorophyll.

        You could get a lot of them to sign the petition, too.

        1. First the idea of walking through a Whole Foods parking lot putting NRA and Trump 2020 stickers on all the cars and now this.

          Between Insty and the Huns everyone is trying to get me in trouble.

        2. I’m for starting a movement to ‘restore Earth’s original atmosphere’ from before the nasty O2 molecule made its appearance. Think we could start that movement?

        3. After all, a lot of them signed the petition to ban di-hydrogen monoxide . . .

          1. After all, the uncontrolled release of chlorophyll into the environment is the root cause of all wildfires!
            etc, etc.

    3. Environmentalism makes woke white people feel like gods.
      It lets them pretend that they have the power of life or death over all life on the planet.

      1. Of course what they really want is the power of life and death over their fellow humans; it has nothing to do with “saving the Earth” and everything to do with imposing global totalitarian socialism “by any means necessary”.

        1. Even the Socialism is pretty much optional to that bunch- whatever gives them global totalitarianism with them in charge is good with them.

    4. “Save the Planet!”

      The planet will go along just fine. *We* may not be around to experience it, but for the next several billion years (until the Sun blows up), the planet will be just fine.

    5. I’m reminded of Ian Malcolm’s “Save the Planet” scorn from the book version of “Jurassic Park.”

      “The planet is a six billion year old hunk of rock. There’s really nothing we can do that might hurt it.”

  15. So all of the dairy fat is in the ice cream and there’s none left for the yogurt?

  16. Have they adopted anything like CA’s ridiculous Prop 65? You know, the one that says pretty much any substance is “known to the state of California to cause cancer, reproductive harm, or birth defects.” Harmful substances like…coffee.

    I remember a news trope in the 80s that used to preface new ideas originating in CA as “the latest from trend-setting California” or some variation. They appear to have trended us all right into crazy.

      1. I haven’t lived there since ’08, but from my understanding, that label is ubiquitous there, so it seems they already have.

    2. 90% of my comments on Amazon are “yeah, the tag says it may cause cancer in California. That is because they passed a law that if you get cancer, it was because of something you touched, so everyone put a warning on their stuff.”

      1. I was looking through a jewelry catalogue, and they have the CA (and IL) warning, with a note saying, in effect, “If you crush and inhale or eat our lead crystal beads, you might get lead poisoning. Otherwise no worries.”

        1. One of my friends proposed a simple warning label: “Not for use by stupid people.” Then, when someone does something idiotic with your product and tries to sue you, you can point out that you clearly warned them on the label.

          “Okay, Councilor, your client is seriously going to try to go after us for not warning him that he shouldn’t use his snowblower in the bathtub? And you think you’re going to manage to convince anyone that he doesn’t qualify as stupid?”

          1. Saw on the back of a “wind-shield sun cover”. “Don’t drive car when this is in place”. 😈

            1. Yes, seen well over 20 years ago. Hey, windshield sunscreens are popular in….

              wait for it…..

              California! Land of fruits, nuts, flakes, and lawyers. Apologies to granola.

  17. The single biggest problem* with Prop 65 is that it lacks a safe harbor for good-faith attempts at compliance. Consequently, every business anywhere in the State has a Prop 65 warning sticker, even when there’s no reason to think there’s any problem! Because you’re liable by default if you fail to warn, but needless warnings are “harmless.”

    So the whole thing is rendered even more useless than it would otherwise be.

    * There are lots of other problems, including the crazy-cakes way the decide what to list as carcinogenic, and too many others to list. But the lack of safe harbor is the biggest one.

    1. “If everything causes cancer then nothing causes cancer.” sort of thing – useless labels, because you can’t use them to make informed decisions.
      Reminds me of the legislation forbidding employers to ask about prior criminal records, because people shouldn’t be labelled and excluded based on stereotypes about people who went to jail for something sometime.
      SOOOOO, instead of being able to make informed decisions about people who look like they MIGHT be part of a demographic prone to incarceration, and thus being in a position to employ someone in that stereotypical group who does NOT have a criminal record, cautious employers end up shunning the entire group.
      All the law did was move the boundary of exlusion further out.

      1. If you drink enough of it, Isopropanol (rubbing alcohol) will cause stomach cancer
        granted you will have been dead long before the cancer formed, but Cali made sure we have to label the stuff as cancer causing

  18. Northwest Texas is running 20 degrees cooler than the 30 year average [I refuse to say ‘than normal’]. With more moisture. I notice parts of northern Europe are also cooler than their usual. We’re supposed to be 55 today, 36 tonight, and 51 with rain tomorrow.

    *all chorus together* Darn that global warming!

    2. After a cold and wet April, I’m kind of glad to get the localized warming. OTOH, the official guess for start of fire season is June 1, but I’ll only be a bit surprised if it happens before May 15th.

      The grasses are still green, but there’s a warm and dry spell hitting. Whee.

      1. Already have burning restrictions in Lane County. Might be lifted if there is rain, as in heavy, or steady rain. Mist need not apply …

        1. West side (Medford metro) has them too. Seems people in Ashland don’t know how to do small controlled burns. Protip: small piles in bare dirt help… Not likely they’ll lift the ban; offshore winds have killed humidity over there.

          1. Yes. Medford is dry. Almost ended up down there, in ’82. As it was we stayed in Longview for another 3 years. Then ended up in Eugene instead of Medford.

  19. I don’t know if it’s the house or the region, as I can make no sense of their board. Remember this is the board that was forced on them because it goes down with less use.

    Board? What is board? Is that an electrical power board administrative body or a physical bus of some sort? I gather physical from “it goes down with less use.” No, goes down with less use makes no sense, but since you indicated it is logical, logic cannot be applied, can it? Or an internet discussion board?

      1. Than at home, I presume? Older house, so that makes sense.

        Our old house was (is) originally a 1978 or so house trailer (with additions); plugging in an iron would dim the lights. A circular saw did a number on it too. Some of the wiring is a little hinky or just flat improper; some of which has been rectified.

        1. No. It goes down with fewer things than it did before the government mandated the replacing of the electrical board “to save the Earth” which happened last time we were here. And yes, it was the iron.

        1. Pacific Power strongly encouraged people to get “smart” meters. It’s somewhat convenient for us, as it means I don’t have to do some tricky snow-plowing in winter, but it gives a lot of information out. I’m reasonably sure it doesn’t have the ability to cut power remotely.

          1. EWEB is putting in Smart Meters, both power and water. You can opt out, and people are, but not because of “information” but because of emissions.

          2. *minor heart twang*

            Pacific Power…. that’s the only reason I exist, y’all.

            I seem to remember that they went with a read-only version, and the Seattle guys got caught exactly because they put in “smart” ones that of course were outside accessible.

            (My dad’s dad got hired to go out with his elder brother and electrify some very rural areas, between the wars. Met what we would identify as an incredibly Odd rich girl from a very Odd family, clicked because dude, they’re early 20th century electricians, really?)

        1. Right. Okay. You know, while here and speaking Portuguese half the time my terms are all weird. The funny thing is so are husband’s, and he doesn’t even speak Portuguese.

          2. Once I got beyond a vision of bureaucratic nightmares (well, it is, but in reference to “board”), I thought about old-school electrical panels where stuff literally is mounted on a board. We had a 1903 vintage house when I was growing up, and some of the electrics would have matched that.

  20. Channelling Aesop and VDH, it seems likely that it’s the inbred yokels and lefty Puritans from the Eastern U.S. who migrated to (metaphorically) greener Western pastures who are the problem with California. Texans, be ware.

    1. We had a spate of progressives pop up a few years ago, then disappear. I suspect a change in city leadership, plus local chapters of older groups (NAACP, LULAC) had something to do with it.

      1. In our area, the (few) progressives tend to overreach, or sometimes cheat. One couple wanted a very healthy stipend to run a tiny-town charity. They were turned down, and left in a huff. Another got outed as taking advantage of an assistance program they really weren’t entitled to. The people who were thus deprived of that assistance really weren’t happy, and the progs left before things got ugly.

  21. We share a need for salt, apparently. Hell, I’ll be out with a friend for certain food, like Chinese and Japanese that you would think were salted to hell and back, but I still grab the shaker after taste testing it. Girlfriend breaks out with a lecture about how unhealthy salt is and I’ll say “Oh, so you DO want to have to pick me up off the floor when my blood pressure takes a nose dive for the basement?” Because by the time that I am actively hungry, major nutrients are about burned up and I’m hanging on by a thread.

    1. I remember the hospital food as lacking in salt. I also was getting blood pressure readings UNDER 90/60.

      OTOH, there was the dehydration issue. I was before the operation, so they upped the IV, but it might have kept it down.

    2. Salt doesn’t always affect blood pressure. I went cold turkey for three months, logging my blood pressure twice a day. Then I went back to turning my food white with salty goodness. No change in BP readings logging for the next three months.

      There’s a log of cargo cult medicine out there…

    2. You could put in a few thousand fluid injection wells. The only problem is that the ratchet has only had 113 years in the people’s republic of Frisco. So you are likely to only set off a small 7.0 on a subsidiary fault like the one in 89. One bright spot, Marin county is overdue for a 7, which will damage the elite environmentalists who live there.

      California has been in an earthquake shadow the past 100 years, over the next 100 expect the long term pattern to reassert. First, bunches of damaging “minor” earthquakes, prior to great quakes similar to the 1853 quake on the south section, and the 1906 quake on the north section. The middle section creeps. If you go to Hollister you can see where the fault slowly shifts the ground without an actual earthquake, so the ratchet does not build up stress.

      When the earthquake storm starts, you will see people move out. Likely to Seattle, just in time for the 9.0 Cascadia. Who says God does not have a sense of humor.

      1. While the San Andreas isn’t likely to do damage, the Hayward fault is positioned (geographically and seismically) to do major damage to the East Bay towns. Oakland and Berkeley have a lot of infrastructure that will be clobbered when that fault lets go.

        Further south, the Calavaras fault will have interesting results for a couple of the Silicon Valley reservoirs. Both the Hayward and Calavaras are linked, so it might be a twofer ‘quake.

      2. I must have goofed: first attempt awaiting moderation:

        While the San Andreas isn’t likely to do damage, the Hayward fault is positioned (geographically and seismically) to do major damage to the East Bay towns. Oakland and Berkeley have a lot of infrastructure that will be clobbered when that fault lets go.

        Further south, the Calavaras fault will have interesting results for a couple of the Silicon Valley reservoirs. Both the Hayward and Calavaras are linked, so it might be a twofer ‘quake.

        1. The Hayward is creeping. It is not locked. So while if it was to move it would do major damage, until it stops creeping it should not allow enough stress to build up for a major quake. There are lots of small quakes on the Hayward.

          The Calaveras is the dangerous one. It runs along 680 and causes the hills to the west of the freeway from Pleasanton to Walnut Creek. A major quake on the Calaveras, (which is locked) would bring down every overpass from Concord to San Jose. They just finished upgrading one dam next to the Calaveras.

          Before the 89 earthquake, the Calaveras had a pattern of earthquakes moving north from Hollister to east of San Jose. The stress released by the 89 quake seems to have delayed the next earthquake on the Calaveras north of San Jose. If you extend along the line of the Calaveras, you link up with the Napa fault that caused the 6,0 Napa earthquake in 2014. So I worry much more about the Calaveras.

          One problem is that there are a bunch of “quiet” faults that have not ruptured in the historic record, and a lot of sediment that hides fault traces, so there is much we do not know.

          1. There was a largish earthquake that dropped several older buildings in Klamath Falls. I believe it was in the early ’90s. The kicker is that the fault system around K-Falls (and throughout the county) is largely unmapped and not well understood.

            We try to have everything well tied down, but the (manufactured) house isn’t set up with really good ties. I’m hoping we won’t get anything large. We’re far enough away from the Cascadia subduction zone so that we should have little damage. I hope.

          2. Oh yeah, my information on the Hayward is out of date. I know they were terrified about it going back in the late ’90s. Glad it’s creeping.

            I know Anderson and Coyote reservoirs were supposed to be at risk from the Calavaras (don’t recall where the branch to the Hayward is), and that one of the reservoirs was kept at half-full.

            There’s a small reservoir (Steven’s Creek) in Cupertino that was drained in the ’90s because it was right on the San Andreas.

            1. The USGS still thinks Hayward is more of a danger, just due to historic quakes. I think they are afraid to not keep it a danger, so they ignore the creep on the surface and say it must be locked at depth. Since the bay area quakes are shallow, less than 10 miles, even if the last mile down 9 miles is locked it doesn’t leave much to ratchet.
              Hayward and Calaveras branch off around where 85 and 101 meet south of San Jose. The hills east of 101 trace the Calaveras south of the junction. At the junction, the Hayward heads to Richmond, Calaveras toward Walnut Creek. The two are a vice that squezes the land between and has produced the hills between.

              Regarding the damage from Cascadia. Take a look at the shaking from the Japan 9,0 quake and superimpose it on Oregon. What you have is a giant slab being shoved under Oregon. That is where the volcanos get their lava. A major problem is the shaking will go on for 5 minutes, so it isn’t just one jolt, but different waves interacting, and aftershocks that may be closer.

              Assuming you house doesn’t fall off the foundation, the best thing to prepare is to assume your house is now a ship in storm, rolling back and forth. Look at what might fall over, fall off, hit you when you are sleeping. Secure any tall furniture to a stud, put baby levers on kitchen doors to keep dishes from getting thrown out. You can get museum clay that will help fragile objects stay in place. Make sure you have enough water and canned goods for two weeks.

              Since everything west of you will be without power, no road or rail or air or ship supplies, you help will be coming from the east. So you are likely to be first in line for help. All that hydro power from the river is likely to be knocked out for months, but the lines from California are likely to be OK.

              It is going to be tough on anyone west of the Cascades. Thousands of landslides will cut transportation. My daughter lives in Eugene, so it is something I worry about.

              1. “My daughter lives in Eugene”

                I’m in Eugene with my family. Extended family extends from Grants Pass up the I-5 corridor to Seattle …

                I don’t remember if there have been discussions in this group about whether the Dams in the Cascades will hold or not, and what that means, at least for the valley in general and Eugene specifically. (Another group has, but don’t remember if this one has too …) Downtown Springfield, Eugene, and immediately along River Road will definitely see flooding problems if the dams go due to Cascadia quakes. Entire valley, that question is unanswered. Regardless, won’t be able to go anywhere, and power (for most) and water (for all, or not safe) will be out.

                1. One problem for both Oregon and Washington is that when a lot of important structures were built there was an assumption there was no earthquake problem. They did not know about Cascadia. Lots can go wrong with dams. Even if they have no damage, landslides can cause water to slosh around

                  California still has problems with earthquake designs, even tho we have known we have an earthquake problem since the Spanish stole the land from the Indians. The missions kept falling down in the many earthquakes. So you would think we would have done better, but freeways/dams/ keep falling down when the earth shakes, or it rains.

                  Who goes looking for problems? So you assume everything is fine, until it isn’t. I suspect any Cascade dams are so far down the list of possible problems that no one has even thought to look. It is like Japan’s problem with the nuke plants. No one thought you could have a 50′ wall of water that would wipe out the generators, with no easy way to hook up to outside power. So no one worried until it was too late.

                  Who owns the dams? What are their design purposes? Who, if anyone, regulates them? How old are they? It would be interesting to ask Eugene’s Public Works/Planning Departments what they know. Do they have flood maps that show danger zones?

                  When we visit our daughter, I find the street layout of Eugene/Springfield/Santa Clara “interesting”. A small city is very fragmented. There are several: “I wouldn’t try to get there from here”. configurations, that seem perplexing for such a small town.

                  1. I grew up here. I remember when there were only two bridges in Eugene across the Willamette (not counting the freeway, well highway back then): Coburg Bridge and Franklin Bridge between Franklin and Main Street Springfield (technically the latter is a Springfield bridge.)

                    The Hwy 569 (Beltline) bridge didn’t go in until the mid to late 60’s. Washington/Jefferson (Delta/105), was completed 1970.

                    That is it between W and E Eugene, three 4-lane bridges. One gets snarled, everything is snarled.

                    At that my husband laughs at us natives. What we call “grid lock” generally at worse takes 20 minutes to get through (baring full on stop accident), what is generally called “sludge”. He grew up in San Diego and regularly worked in LA during HS and summers home from college (in the late 60’s through the mid ’70s.)

              2. One big problem with the Hayward is that it could take out the dikes that protect the fresh-water through the Sacramento River delta and thus San Fran’s water system. That’s as of the last I read, which was in the early 2000s.

              3. Quake-preparation is pretty natural to us. $SPOUSE and I spent a fair number of decades in the state, though it’s pushing 16 years since we bailed.

                The current guess from the Cascadia is that anything within 100 miles of the coast is in deep rubble when it goes. We’re at the southern end of Oregon (and the subduction zone), and about 130 miles from the coast. The Official Guess is that we’ll see some damage, but the it shouldn’t be horrible. The biggest concern (we’re rural; city folks have a different can of worms) is lack of power. I keep [mumble] gallons of fossil fuels, but the main backup is solar. A system big enough to handle refrigeration sits behind the house, and the system to power the well is (Yippie!) almost done.

                We live about 40 miles from town, and 2 weeks worth of supplies maps to “bare cupboards”. We don’t have bare cupboards. 🙂 Some food comes over the Cascades, but US 395 and OR 140 is already a standard shipping route.opened after a quake (there are some bridges, but landslide potential will be high), I’d expect a lot of cargo going west through our area once the Cascade route is cleared.

                The other stuff is second nature. Bookshelves are bound to walls and such. Crockery formerly on a shelf in the kitchen is waiting for the earthquake wax and a round tuit to be reinstalled, if we do it at all.

                The big concern in state is Portland and the coastal communities. They’ll get clobbered.

  23. it’s almost impossible to find a no no-fat yogurt.

    Gosh o holy fish-hooks— WORST baby food attempt I made with the Princess was in Seattle (which is the worst of Cali in a little city bubble), when the only whole milk yogurt I could find was Greek.

    As best I can tell, it was mostly unsweetened. (she was roughly a year old so I didn’t grab any of the “made with honey” ones)

    The poor little girl acted like I tried to poison her. So I took a bite.

    At which point I agreed with her.

    1. So your solution is to Beware Greeks bearing yogurt? (I’ve wanted to use that fore YEARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRS.)

    2. Being a depression era country boy, my daddy would eat almost anything my mother would buy. Until, that is, she experimentally bought pumpernickel bread. We all agreed it was inedible. Obviously, someone must disagree since they made the stuff, but to us WASPy people, it was far removed. Shoot, I never had whole wheat until I was in the Army; that was actually good.

      1. Grampa Pete was Danish; pumpernickel was a standard at the place. (We’d have holiday dinners around noon-ish, then in the evening, there’d be leftovers and bread. Turkey and pumpernickel might be an acquired taste, but I had it.) I think we ate more Wonderbread type stuff at home because budget, but I had a lot of Breads of Color until gluten issues started the gut to wrench.

        Gluten-free bread has a few varieties, but the most important to me is Edible vs Non-edible. Subway test-marketed a GF sandwich. Second category. OTOH, Udi bread and Trader Joe’s GF bagels are quite good, though expensive.

        FWIW, if you want to bake and cook gluten-free, see the Betty Hagman cookbooks. The yeast/rice bread is really quite good.

  25. Sarah, got the new “Monster Hunter Guardian” eARc.
    Wonderfully done, a worthy addition to the MHI cycle.
    Now do a piece on what it’s like to work with Larry.

    EAT TOES!!!!!!

    1. 42F with a windchill of 38F here in Texas. As the radio dude said at 0730, “It’s another lovely October morning in the Panhandle.”

      1. I was there for those days.
        Best radio weather report ever, from the sixties.
        “The weather forecast is for clear and warm, but if you look out your window, it’s snowing.”

      2. 34F just before dawn this morning, then 80 degrees in the afternoon. That’s a little extreme, we usually keep the daily swing below 40 degrees.

        I’ve been told (and have little reason to doubt it) that the 4th of July parade in K-Falls has been snowed on. We count on one or two hard freezes in June. 6 mil polyethylene plastic over the raised beds for the win!

        1. July 4, ’86 Dee Wright Observatory on Hwy 242 had 6″ of (very wet) snow. More at higher reaches of the Cascades.

          Don’t know the south east part of the state well, doubt it is any different. But Cascdes 126/120 down to the Umpqua river, and the north east corner, have grown up hiking, fishing, and hunting (okay as a kid got dragged along.) Have seen it snow any month that has 28 days or more. May not always stick. But snow could be coming down.

          1. Since we’ve moved here, we’ve had snowfall at home in every month except July and August. Elevation of 4300′ might just be a factor. 🙂

            1. Yes. When I’ve seen it snow in July and August, it has been high in the Wallowa/Blue, Crater Lake, Side of South Sister, Top of 242 (Dee Wright Observatory), etc.; well above pass level. Rarely sticks, but it is snowing.

  27. We had a couple of 80 degree days here in Dayton, but now we have had a couple of cold rainy days. My new Siberian wallflower (planted in a planter to ward off the Preen-using landscapers that killed the last one) has perked up amazingly, put out new buds, and is now flowering. Later on in the year, it will be happy all summer and in droughts, but right now it wants to be in springtime cold mode.

    I have another planter with a couple of portulacas, and they do not care what temperature it is, short of freezing. So they are happy too.

    1. Our tomato seeds have mostly sprouted. They’ll go in the greenhouse June 1, weather permitting. A tulip planted by the previous owners (before 2003) grew and bloomed this spring. Didn’t know we had tulips in that location. It’s kind of nice having a wet spring (by semi-arid conditions).

Comments are closed.