Evening Walk in the Neighborhood

There's something almost surreal about my neighborhood. Odd encounters.

Starting on our evening walk, I persuaded Jasper not to head straight to the Squirrel Grove at the DMV.  The problem is that there are hardly any squirrels there.  Even Jasper seemed to grasp that logic.  Instead, we headed down a side street, where Jasper got aggressive while warning off several other dogs walking with their masters.

Up ahead, as we approached Broadway, we could hear a familiar dog barking.  There was a stranger standing awkwardly on the street corner just outside the dog's fence.  As we got closer, I could see the man had binoculars and with no guile whatsoever was carefully studying the back of a used car lot on Broadway.  As we passed, I bid the man a steely hello, and we moved on to Broadway.  Curious about the spying, Jasper and I dawdled on the sidewalk and started watching the used car lot too.  A salesman was showing a customer the engine of a car for sale.  It wasn't clear what was so compelling about that.

Jasper and I pushed on.  We bid hello to a woman with a pram.  We passed by a barber shop offering  haircuts to people of all races and genders.  The antique shop window displayed a dog pillow and a cat pillow sitting on an expensive couch rather than an actual dog and cat.  We passed by a corner where we used to say hello to a Black Lab, but we hadn't seen the dog in a while.  Joyfully, the Black Lab was home!  I like that dog.  He's a good boy!

Passing by one address featuring a tall fence surrounding a residence and a business, I was surprised to see a city notice of impending development.  A proposal was pending to use this address for cannabis delivery.  I was puzzled.  Two years ago, when doing work for the census, I had counted the people at this residence.  They were fresh Covid-19 refugees from San Francisco.  I was puzzled then why they'd move to Sacramento - surely no safer than San Francisco - but lots of people were on the move during the pandemic, including people already wanting to move away from San Francisco.

"Hey!" a man shouted, as he came bounding the steps of the residence. He had noticed me reading the notice.  This man wasn't familiar; certainly not one of the San Francisco refugees.  Talking through the tall fence, he asked, "What is your impression of the development proposal?"  I pondered.  "Well, it's not very far away from the cannabis dispensary on Broadway, so I was thinking maybe it's just too much for the neighborhood." The man listened and eagerly explained the proposal.  "It for a cannabis delivery service; not a place for cannabis sales.  So, people won't be gathering here.  But get this: free armed security for my family!"  

The guy had a point.  This area can get pretty rough, with all the homeless people nearby, especially along this strip.  That's why the address had a tall fence.  Indeed, there was a murder near here several years ago.  I said, "I live near the DMV parking lot, and with all the security guards there, I've never had a burglary.  Free security is great!"  The man smiled.  I got his point and was persuaded.  I wouldn't oppose this development proposal.  Meanwhile, Jasper and his dog were making friends through the fence.  He repeated, "free armed security for my family!"

Jasper and I moved on, and sure enough, were captured by the irresistible allure of the Squirrel Grove.  Sure enough, there were no squirrels there.  The spell was broken.  We started heading home.  We were close enough to where the man with the binoculars had been that I should be able to see him if he was still there.  So, I started staring intently across the street, trying to spot him.  "Hello," a woman said with steely resolve that seemed to say, "watch out; this guy is a loon."  "Hello," I replied.  "Just walking the dog."

Jasper and I started following the woman, from a distance.  I had gotten a strange vibe from her, like she might be homeless.  She walked carefully, right along the perimeter of the cemetery.  As Jasper and I got home, I saw her plop down in the dry grass right along the fence, where she'll no doubt bunk down for the night.

Home is where the squirrels are, Jasper.

Otero County Idiots

Prison for them!:

(CNN) A New Mexico county commissioner, awaiting sentencing for his January 6 conviction, said Thursday that he plans to defy a state Supreme Court order and will not vote to certify the results of a recent primary election in a flareup over vote-tallying machines that's drawing attention and alarm from national voting rights advocates. 

"I'm not planning to move off my position," Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin said in a telephone interview with CNN on Thursday. "Why have a commission if we just get overridden by the court system?" 

The State Supreme Court on Wednesday, acting on an emergency request from New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, ordered the Otero County commissioners to certify the primary results by Friday -- the statutory deadline for county certification. The commissioners had declined to do so earlier in the week, citing distrust of Dominion voting machines.

Paul Simon - Boy in the Bubble

Early Onset of the 2022 Southwestern Monsoon

There are strong indications of an early onset of the southwestern monsoon this year. It doesn't necessarily mean a good monsoon, since the flow of tropical moisture north can stutter on and off in a disappointing way during the summer. Still, an early onset is good, since it gives more opportunities for rain, which makes a good monsoon more likely. 

Rains are forecast in the southwest starting Friday, June 17th. The commonly-accepted threshold for monsoonal weather in Tucson is a dew point of 54 degrees Fahrenheit, and higher. Currently, dew point is 34 degrees. That dew point needs to bump up! 

Courtesy of the folks at U of A in Tucson, here is an interesting summary of last monsoon's rainfall in New Mexico. There was a broad arc of heavier-than-expected rain from El Paso to Socorro to Gallup. Ominously, rainfall was deficient in the mountains east of Santa Fe - exactly where this year's fires have caused so much devastation.

Squirrel Spirit

Lately, Jasper has been surrendering his evening walk in order to indulge in a half-hour barking fest at squirrels; real or imaginary. I don’t really understand it. I think he wants small animals to torment, but there aren’t enough of them, and the ones that are present are far too nimble to submit. So, we head to a grove at the DMV where the Squirrel Spirit is strong, and let loose.

Focus!

The Cost of the Drought on California Air Quality

A really thought-provoking article:

In a region that already suffers from some of the worst particulate pollution in the nation, San Joaquin Valley residents are learning that extreme drought conditions can be as hard on human lungs as they are on local crops.

With periods of extended dryness and water curtailments occurring more frequently due to climate change, growers in California’s Central Valley — one of the most productive agricultural regions on the planet — are increasingly looking to fallow fields or uproot orchards and vineyards for lack of irrigation. Once gathered into towering pyres, the vegetation is then set ablaze, sending lung- and heart-aggravating haze across the valley.

San Joaquin Valley air regulators have struggled for nearly 20 years to outlaw the practice of agricultural burning, encouraging farmers instead to grind up forsaken crops in wood chippers and spread them as mulch. But amid a third year of drought, some fear a resurgence in large-scale burning because it’s cheaper than grinding, and because so many acres are being abandoned due to drought.

Already, 395,000 acres of farmland have been fallowed across California because of the drought, according to UC Merced research. Industry groups estimate 60,000 acres of almond trees and 15,000 acres of vineyards will be removed statewide this year as well.

“If you’re not able to get water, then you’re gonna have a lot of dry stuff that’s potentially going to die. And then what’s gonna happen with that waste?” asked Catherine Garoupa White, executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition. “It’s easier to just strike a match and light it on fire.”

...Over the course of his 30-year career as a physician, Anthony Molina witnessed the effects of San Joaquin Valley air pollution firsthand. He is still haunted by the memory of medical personnel rushing a 16-year-old boy into the emergency room of the Clovis Community Medical Center during an asthma attack on a bad air day. All efforts to resuscitate the teen proved unsuccessful.

“He came in, intubated, but ... his lungs were just clamped down,” Molina recalled. “And so you just couldn’t ventilate him. Trying to pump air into his lungs was like trying to blow up a balloon that would not expand, basically.”

...Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers, said removals and burning have increased due to financial hardship within the grape industry. Recent droughts, Bitter said, have coincided with a seismic shift in consumer preference. A number of California grape products, including varieties of raisins and table grapes, have fallen out of demand.

“What you see in those vineyard numbers was largely due to that shift in the raisin industry,” Bitter said. “That same thing can also be said about table grapes, because that was another industry that was very highly dependent on the Thompson seedless variety, which became out of favor in consumers’ minds.”

In the early 2000s, more than a million tons of agricultural waste was burned in the San Joaquin Valley every year, according to the California Air Resources Board. Hundreds of thousands more were burned at biomass power plants, which were often criticized by environmental groups for emitting pollution and attracting truck traffic.

Officials appealed to farmers to use wood-chipping equipment to convert dead crops to mulch. Many were deterred by the expense, however. It costs about $500 an acre to burn crops, but more than $1,000 an acre to chip and shred them.

In 2003, state Sen. Dean Florez, a Democrat from Shafter, introduced a bill that would phase out agricultural burning by 2010. When Gov. Gray Davis signed it into law, he said he hoped it would curtail air pollution in a region vexed by “air that’s easier to see than it is to breathe.”

Initially, the new law appeared to work. By 2011, the amount of agricultural waste burned in fields had dropped roughly 80%.

But, as California entered a historic drought and large swaths of farmland were taken out of production, the trend dramatically reversed. By 2017, the amount of burned agricultural waste had more than tripled, peaking at 900,000 tons. At the same time, biomass power plants were shuttered, perhaps resulting in more field burning.

Due to drought and economic factors, the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District has repeatedly sought permission from the state Air Resources Board to extend the deadline for an end to agricultural burning. Under the state’s most recent plan, the air district has laid out a timeline of burning restrictions that it hopes will virtually end the practice by 2025. That now seems unlikely to occur during a worsening drought. 

“Increased removal of orchards and vineyards will add strain to already existing difficulties faced in implementing this aggressive open burning phase-out strategy,” said Jaime Holt, spokesperson for the San Joaquin Valley air district. “And of course all of this is happening at the same time the region is experiencing worsening air quality impacts due to increasingly severe wildfires.”

Names and Addresses of the Patriot Front Folk

Here are the names and addresses of the people arrested in Coeur d'Alene, ID, for conspiracy to riot. In the event the link fails, I saved the document, and can provide it. Show them a little Antifa love! 

And talking about that, the proud boys attacked a San Francisco drag queen book hour. Time to publish the attacker names and addresses too!

Police told the site that Panda Dulce, a local drag performer, was reading at the San Lorenzo Library when "a group of 8-10 Proud Boys" came into the room shouting and threatening those there. They wrote that the group was forced to leave, and that Panda Dulce was forced to hide in a back office with a security guard. 

Drag queen story hour is a program with performers who come to the library in full regalia and read children's books to youth, the group's site explained. The stories are typically ones that talk about being different and being accepted. The goal is to help children understand that they can dress and act however they want and still be loved and accepted by those around them. Kids are urged to look beyond gender stereotypes where only women can wear dresses and men wear pants.

Self-Evident, Yet This Country Rejects The Advice

A Tango!