Saturday, October 03, 2020
Memorial Service For DJ Harder
Attended the memorial service on Friday, October 2, 2020 for DJ Harder in Woodland, CA. Only 17 years old. Sad beyond words. The family requested everyone wear Hawaiian style clothing - DJ's favorite style - and everyone complied.My various worlds were colliding here. I knew Missy and her family from Woodland Dance Academy days (1993-2004), but never knew her son DJ. Nevertheless, I knew DJ's friend Mia from DMTC days (2000-2020), specifically Evita in 2015. Mia sang a nice song. She said it's the first time she' sung publicly in three years. She's the head of FFA at her school, despite the lack of livestock at her house. And I know Jenny from both worlds, plus the Woodland Opera House, and note that her parents remain active in Woodland politics - her father is running for reelection.
DJ was a football player, so there were a lot of football players at the service. Coaches spoke effectively too, particularly about the issue of mental health.
Covid made the service awkward. The turnout was about 300 people, so the service was held in a big outdoors tent. I was outside the tent at the back. Mingling after the service was discouraged. Pick up your ham sandwich and please leave....
Friday, October 02, 2020
Has Anyone Seen the Remdesevir?
I get occasionally-helpful Job Spam from something called the California Job Department. Today they announce:
"Hi Marc, US Secret Service is hiring immediately near Sacramento and we think you'd be a great fit."
Um, probably not. "The remdesevir. Has anyone seen the remdesevir?" And there I'd be, whistling....
Maisey Rika - Tangaroa Whakamautai
Ooh, she went to White Island! That's an active volcano! Killed a bunch of tourists last year.
It Is What It Is
An October Surprise!
The news is getting hard to follow:
Donald Trump
Melania Trump
Hope Hicks
Ronna McDaniel
Kellyanne Conway
Mike Lee
Bill Stepien
Thom Tillis
John Jenkins
Ron Johnson
Chris Christie
and more!
Gamma
Tropical storm Gamma has formed in the western Caribbean, and it will soon strike the Yucatan Peninsula. The question is, what does Gamma do next?
Current forecast shows Gamma moving to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, dithering, then moving onto the Louisiana coast. Then, the system AFTER Gamma moves in, and starts forming a tropical storm right off the coast of St. Petersburg (which would be a problem).
Nevertheless, this forecast is not baked in. The forecast changes all the time, which means it's not clear yet what will happen.
Where's my voodoo doll? Maybe focused thinking can change the winds.
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Pigeons
The numbers of neighborhood pigeons have abruptly dropped, this week and last week. What's up? Where did they go? What are they doing?
It's strange to leave out bird food and no one eats it.
Cruise Ships Heading Out Again
And where will you dock when the infestation takes over?:
The current “no sail” policy, which was originally put in place in April and later extended, is set to expire on Wednesday. Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., had recommended the extension, worried that cruise ships could become viral hot spots, as they did at the beginning of the pandemic.
But at a meeting of the coronavirus task force on Tuesday, Dr. Redfield’s plan was overruled, according to a senior federal health official who was not authorized to comment and so spoke on condition of anonymity. The administration will instead allow the ships to sail after Oct. 31, the date the industry had already agreed to in its own, voluntary plan. The rejection of the C.D.C.’s plan was first reported by Axios.
Pay Attention to the Memes
Fascism has been around us all along, trying the locks, peering through the windows, finding ways in. This election gives us an opportunity to reject fascism, should we vote:
But the blizzard of memes didn’t allow any time to distinguish between the cute and the offensive, the innocuous and the hateful. One section, Phillips recalled, showed “several internet-infamous young white women who had inspired widespread mockery online.” Such women, the three men explained, were referred to as “camwhores.” When the photograph of one flashed on-screen, the crowd booed. A man in the audience shouted: “Kill her!”
Phillips, an assistant communications professor at Syracuse University, now thinks she got it wrong. All that ironic racism doesn’t feel so ironic anymore. “I don’t even know exactly when it totally shifted,” she told me, from her yellow-painted living room in Syracuse, New York, her hands anxiously fluttering around her face as we spoke over Zoom. “What seemed to be fun and funny ended up functioning as a Trojan horse for white-supremacist, violent ideologies to shuffle through the gates and not be recognized.”
First - And I Hope Only - Debate
The debate was fascinating - like watching the Twin Towers collapse over and over again. There’s no point in having more debates this cycle - it’s difficult to argue with a turd, and a little bit morbid too.:
Wallace asked each candidate to weigh in on what they were “prepared to do to reassure the American people that the next president will be the legitimate winner of this election.”
Trump is not prepared to do this, of course, and so he took the opportunity to explain, yet again, that he has no intention of conceding defeat or conceding to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses at the polls in November. Instead, he urged his own supporters to “go into the polls and watch very carefully” and reaffirmed that he was “counting” on a conservative Supreme Court, with a newly confirmed Amy Coney Barrett, to crown him the winner if there are any problems with the “ballots.” (Reader: There will be problems with the “ballots.”) Pressed on the complete lack of evidence of fraud in mail-in balloting, Trump insisted that it is widespread and pervasive (ballots! In creeks! Sold by mailmen! In Philadelphia!) and promised “this is going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen. We might not know for months because these ballots are going to be all over.” Trump and his attorney general have been pushing this all-out fabrication all summer, in an effort to have the election called early, before all mail-in ballots are counted, and also to depress voter confidence in the possibility that any general election can be conclusive or fair. Again, that’s the point, and it’s the only point: He doesn’t want you to believe the election can be fair.
Maybe We'll Succeed After All
Apparently the high-stakes 2020 Census is succeeding despite the Trump Administration’s efforts to torpedo participation with a shortened timeline. Sacramento County is already at 74%, compared to 2010’s 70%. I think improved technology has helped with the effort.
My sense as an enumerator is that cooperation from Latinos is good. If Trump wanted to discourage cooperation with fears about immigration enforcement, he hasn’t succeeded. I see large households with many workers and their children and sense curiosity, not fear. Cooperation from blacks is pretty good too. People are taking the time to participate, although it can be a tedious and time-consuming process with large families. I’m seeing no impact from sovereign-citizen movements, at least locally.
Where I’m sensing weakness is with recently-arrived Asian communities: Hmong, Mien, etc. That sense of wanting to retreat to the shadows and disappear. That’s where the outreach effort needs to be fortified.
And I hope that rural communities are doing well. So much space; so little time:
With a response rate of nearly 74%, Sacramento County has already surpassed the committee’s goal of 70.1%, which was the final result in the county for the 2010 census. “We have already succeeded,” said Judy Robinson, the 2020 census manager for Sacramento County. Despite the achievement, organizers are pushing for more response, with some aiming for an incredibly ambitious 80%.
The Complete Count Committee has been meeting since fall 2018, uniting community groups across the county in an effort reach everyone. With community and government steering committees, the effort has doubled down on representing all in the county. With subcommittees focusing on ethnic and racial groups, the LGBTQIA+ community, seniors, children, different socioeconomic classes, business and industry sectors and other communities, the Complete Count Committee has gathered what they believe is a true representation of the diversity of Sacramento County.
Having a Public Health Infrastructure Helps
Wish we had one:
While so much about the virus and how it operates remains unclear, sub-Saharan Africa so far has dodged a deadly wave of coronavirus cases. Many factors have contributed to this. A number of West African nations already had a pandemic response infrastructure in place from the Ebola outbreak of late 2013 to 2016. Just six years ago, Liberia lost nearly 5,000 people to Ebola. At the beginning of this year, Liberia began screening for covid-19 at airports. Travelers coming in from countries with more than 200 cases were quarantined. To date, Liberia, a country of some 5 million, has 1,335 cases and around 82 deaths. After the Ebola pandemic, Senegal set up an emergency operations center to manage public health crises. Some covid-19 test results come back in 24 hours, and the country employs aggressive contact tracing. Every coronavirus patient is given a bed in hospital or other health-care facility. Senegal has a population of 16 million, but has only 302 registered deaths. Several countries have come up with innovations. Rwanda, a country of 12 million, also responded early and aggressively to the virus, using equipment and infrastructure that was in place to deal with HIV/AIDS. Testing and treatment for the virus are free. Rwanda has recorded only 26 deaths.
Monday, September 28, 2020
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Remembering Some Of The Interesting People I'm Meeting at My New Job 6
Sunday September 27, 2020:
No work today.
Saturday September 26, 2020:
A tough grind of a day with increasingly-dysfunctional cases, because all the easy cases have already been taken care of.
Got yelled at by a mental case up in Natomas. "You are making the dogs bark and causing me so much trouble! You bring the 'rona! Can't you read the sign?" (There were various signs blaming visitors for the coronavirus.) "Get off my land!" (I moved very slowly) "Go! Shoo! Get out!"
Met a number of large, aggressive dogs. I was trying to make friends with some and a teenager spoke to me like I was retarded. "Read the sign!" (The sign said 'Beware of Dogs'.) These dogs will jump the fence!" (I don't think so, but whatever.)
Friday September 25, 2020: Southeast Corner of Natomas
Just two hours in Natomas. I went into a kind of mixed housing area - some trailers, some RVs, and some small houses. Interviewed a lady who looked quite old, but she was actually younger than me, but suffering cancer. "There have been other census takers around here, but I didn't answer their questions," she said. Maybe a good thing too. According to her the interviewers were asking all kinds of personal questions: SSNs, driver's license numbers, etc. If so, that conduct is illegal.
I was in someone's back yard investigating an old apartment when the people arrived at the main residence. They were upset and tense. Answer the damned questions, and maybe you won't find me in your back yard!
Thursday September 24, 2020: Homeless Night
Early morning hours of Homeless Night. Many homeless camps that had been scouted in advance had been moved out by the county authorities. Our count was quite low. (Maybe the authorities did this on purpose to manipulate our count????)
At one point we realized we were next to the homeless camp we had first scouted a few hours before, just on the other side of the creek. We were looking back at where we had been. Now we were in danger of double-counting as well as overcounting. "The count is 19!" proclaimed the boss. (I thought maybe nine, but some of the homeless who had been here yesterday must be somewhere, or other - just not here.)
I talked with one guy about our shared experiences. I told him that I thought I did well because I'm older. He said he thought he did well because he was younger. I'm sure we are both right. I told him the story about the Salvadoran woman who misunderstood the race question and used Spanish Siri to explain she was brunette. He told me a story about a Neo-Nazi in his neighborhood who was trying to get past the disappointment of World War II. Hoo boy!
The team was still in a counting mood, but I decided to bail at 4 a.m. and finally got to bed at 5:30 a.m.
Wednesday September 23, 2020: Homeless Night
Late evening hours for Homeless Night. It was apparently our job to inverstigate the various parts of Morrison Creek running through South Sacramento. Morrison Creek isn't really a creek - more like a slough, or a ditch, festooned with trash brought by the homeless.
On our first foray into a camp we were a bunch of frightened bunnies - 14 of us hustling through a camp strung out on the bank of the creek, and back again. I heard a voice from inside a tent: "If you are single - and female - and would like to mingle..." I thought maybe there were 16 people in the camp; possibly as few as eight. "The count is 30!" proclaimed our leader. Always possible, of course. We were counting tents and shelters, not really people, since they were inside them. Oh well! An overcount here accounts for some of the homeless people we were skipping in other places.
Tuesday September 22, 2020: Southeast Corner of Natomas
Quite a few Spanish-speaking folks in large households. Talked to a woman with suspicions about my job who had recently evicted a roommate. A large pile of furniture was sitting in the street. "Worst roommate ever!' she asserted.
Another fellow was an in-mover. He held up mail, all addressed to different people at the address. "See all these different people who were here before I arrived? Credit card fraud is what I think!"
Monday September 21, 2020: Del Paso
Crazed kids on bicycles. War whoops and agressive moves, and parents trying to corral their activities.
Sunday September 20, 2020:
Saturday September 19, 2020:
Friday September 18, 2020:
Thursday September 17, 2020:
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