Last Dancehall Class of the Year

Slumber Party - December 29-30, 2021

Egads! Jumanji, Aladdin!, Babe, and Chicken Run. (I tear up with Babe.)

Museum of Science and Curiosity (MOSAC) - December 28, 2021

Website

Wet Winter Still Holding

The 2021-22 La Niña rainy season in northern California has so far been erratic af, but in Sacramento we are still holding at about 230% above average. Goodness knows we can still snatch drought from the jaws of inundation, but the longer the precipitation lasts, the better things look. We just broke a December snow record in the northern Sierra that had held for 50 years:

 

The Sierra has officially beat a snow record for this month that was set more than 50 years ago.

As of Tuesday morning, the new December record is at 202.1 inches. According to the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab, the previous record was set in 1970 at 179 inches.

Even more snow is expected to come to Northern California Tuesday night into Wednesday. 

Although the previous record is from 1970, that year is also the first time they began keeping track of Sierra snow. It’s possible there may have been years before 1970 with more snow that wasn’t recorded.

The Standells - "Dirty Water"

I've always been puzzled why the Classic Rock radio format often ignores the songs that people were actually listening to back in the day. Like an alternative reality I only half belong to, even though I was there. 

Listening to rock music on the radio in the Sixties, I gravitated to Motown - so energetic, and for someone from Corrales, NM, so exotic! - but I also liked anything with a good beat. 

I'm amused that none of the California-based Standells had been to Boston before releasing this song. According to Wikipedia, "Tower Records producer Ed Cobb wrote the song after a visit to Boston, during which he was robbed on a bridge over the Charles River."

New Covid-19 Case Rates in the U.S. are Now at the Highest Level of the Entire Pandemic

And wham! - just like that, new Covid-19 case rates in the U.S. are now at the highest level of the entire pandemic. There are places overseas with higher rates, but the U.S. keeps striving. New Covid-19 cases in Washington D.C., and the state of New York, are just as high as in Denmark.

That Transistor Radio!

When I was twelve years old, early in 1969, I fetched the AM transistor radio out of storage. Our family was supposed to use the newly-purchased radio to get updates from the government after the Cuban Missile Crisis went nuclear in 1962, after we had fled Corrales and relocated (by family consensus) to the ironically-named town of Cuba, NM (provided we weren't incinerated first, of course), but since that didn't happen, the radio, along with the newly-purchased 50-gallon water tanks, had been collecting dust ever since. 

Playing with the radio, outdoors, after the sun set, I was shocked at just how many radio stations I could listen to, from all over North America - KSL (Salt Lake City), KFI (Los Angeles), KRLD (Dallas), WHO (Des Moines), KSTP (St. Paul) - from all over! So sensitive! Totally beguiling! 

Rock music was red hot in 1969, of course. I loved listening to Wolfman Jack, broadcasting from XERF in Ciudad Acuña, just over the Mexican border from Del Rio, TX,, broadcasting at 250,000 watts, five times the regulated U.S. maximum limit. XERF dominated the airwaves. Apparently you could drive from New York City to Los Angeles and never lose the signal. The radio station was so powerful that Europeans and even Soviets could sometimes receive it. 

And so many good Sixties tunes! Like this one, from 1966. Never gets old!

 

Unfurling of the James Webb Space Telescope - Animation