Marc Valdez Weblog: 2025

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

My New Sign, My Row Of Signs, And Other Protest Elements For A Fine Saturday (December 27th)

Animals Just Trying To Hide In Plain Sight

Why aren’t birds gathering at my feeding spot? Oh, it’s because this soggy-looking hawk is surveying the scene from the lamp post above.

Two squirrels, and the hawk as well, are trying to avoid the intrusive human and his dog. The squirrels are also trying to avoid the hawk’s attention. One squirrel is trying to stay motionless on the right side of the pole, more or less hidden from the hawk. The other squirrel is scrambling up the pole directly under the hawk - a difficult place to reach.

Christmas Shopping On December 23rd

Evacuated from Barnes and Noble, for unknown reasons.

(I eventually learned they were testing an alarm system next door. And it works! It works at B&N too. It’s alarming!)

In Arden Fair Mall proper now. I’m not in Kansas anymore.

Trying to overhear conversations…

“You need a pasttime.” “I need to learn a musical instrument.”

“I need an iPhone 15.”

“It’s just a metal cube.”

“I don’t remember her ever talking about her lips.”

Impossible To Reason With

ABBA - Happy New Year

There's an article in Salon explaining that this song is very popular in Vietnam.

I found out that people back in those days didn’t really have a lot of options in terms of entertainment. Therefore ABBA is one of the few [bands accepted] because we as a country didn’t have a lot of hostility against the Swedes because they were advocates against the Vietnam War.”

Good Humor Man of Anxiety

My house backs onto a parking lot for DMV workers. This morning - the last morning of 2025 - I awoke to repetitive honking from out there. Someone had apparently triggered their vehicle's alarm, and couldn't figure out how to turn it off. At a loss to find a solution, they began driving in growing circles around the parking lot, in the hope that would help. It seemed they had become a Good Humor man of anxiety, spreading their distress all around. A fitting way to end 2025. 2026 will be better.

Monday, December 22, 2025

Very Uneven Precipitation So Far In Northern California

Here's a plot of precipitation for the last seven days in northern California. It is SO uneven!

They had flooding in Redding, where it rained about 7.5 inches. More than 14 inches fell north of town.

Precipitation exceeded 20 inches in isolated mountain areas of northern California - 22 inches east of Paradise. Yet rainfall has been minimal in Sacramento (0.32 inches at Sac Exec Airport), and it hasn't rained at all in Modesto.

Rain will roll in again on Christmas Eve. Forecasts for the three-day Christmas period Dec. 24-26 look very wet in northern California, even in Sacramento. Estimated rainfall for the Sacramento area over the next six days is about 3.5 inches.

Thanks To Rachel And Jack For Providing The Energy Required To Put Up The Christmas tree.

Howe at Arden Protest, Sacramento - Stoplight Cheerleading - December 20, 2025

Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Courage the Cowardly Dog

I had never heard of Courage the Cowardly Dog, probably because I’m too old. But maybe I’m getting younger every day, so it’s time.

Jasper and I get a burger:

Photos From Protesting

Howe at Arden, Dec. 13, 2025. I'm the Burma Shave of protesters!

Sidewalk At the John Moss Federal Building, Dec. 11, 2025.

Piñata at the John Moss Federal Building, Dec. 11, 2025.

Sunday, November 30, 2025

Tiffany's Birthday

I marvel how we city dwellers share the city with homeless people. Two communities living together, sharing the same space, but not interacting with each other very much. It seems wrong, somehow. We have common interests in safety and self-respect. We should interact more, and help each other in times of need. We don't, though, mostly because of the gulf of means, which encourages dependency and inappropriate relationships.

I get nervous when a homeless tent appears too close to my back gate. Such folks are able to monitor my presence, and investigate weaknesses in security. Indeed, several years ago, when I was gone for a number of hours, someone dismantled my back gate and stole a bicycle. There had been someone camped nearby, in a perfect spot to know my comings and goings. And I still remember February of 2022, when a strange woman entered my house and police were required to remove her.

So, in early November, I got nervous when someone camped in a tent near my back gate. I stopped feeding the birds, because they were also camped near the bird feeding spot.

Then, on the evening of November 9th, someone knocked on my front door. It was the homeless person camped in the tent; a woman complaining that her clothes were wet, and wondering if I could dry them out with my clothes dryer. She seemed somewhat mentally-challenged, but also in some trouble. Wet clothes are a menace in the November chill. I told her I would meet her at her campsite and see what her needs were..

Meeting her out back, she said someone had thrown water on her clothes, but I didn't believe her. She was using a two-wheeled rubbish bin as a transport vehicle for her belongings, and I think that the bin had collected rainwater from a storm several days prior. There was no other way for her clothes to get so wet. I determined it was probably best to wash and dry the clothes. So, that's what I did, taking mostly jackets and jeans, and washing and drying them. Her name was Tiffany, and she was tracking the time, because at midnight it would be November 10th, and her 38th birthday.

I took Jasper out for his late-night walk. When we returned, after midnight, she was rolling her belongings away, including clean, dry clothes. She did not return either. So, no dependency or inappropriate relationship to worry about. I was able to help her out of a jam, as a good neighbor should do.