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!

Hot Summer Comes

And the assholes will be busy:

(CNN) Idaho police officers on Saturday arrested 31 people who are believed to be affiliated with the White nationalist group called Patriot Front, after they were seen gathering near a Pride parade in the city of Coeur d'Alene, police said.

"It is clear to us based on the gear that the individuals had with them, the stuff they had in their possession, the U-Haul with them along with paperwork that was seized from them, that they came to riot downtown," Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said during a news conference.

The FBI is assisting local police in its investigation, according to FBI Public Affairs Specialist Sandra Yi Barker. Barker said Coeur d'Alene police are the lead law enforcement agency investigating the situation.

The people who were arrested were all wearing similar clothing associated with Patriot Front, including identical insignia, and there was at least one smoke grenade in their possession, police said. They were still being processed at the time of the news conference and have not yet been identified.

White said the group was equipped with "shields, shin guards and other riot gear with them," along with papers he described as "similar to an operations plan that a police or military group would put together for an event." The 31 individuals were arrested for conspiracy to riot, which is a misdemeanor, White said, adding the suspects came from at least 11 states.

Irrigation is Wobbly in New Mexico

Walt sends this. Interesting. I’m looking at some of the two and three week weather-model simulations, some of which suggests an early start to the summer rains. I hope that’s true:

LOS LUNAS — Only months into the 2022 irrigation season, Jason Casuga, chief engineer and CEO of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, told the 50-plus farmers gathered at the Los Lunas Transportation Center on Wednesday afternoon the district was predicting irrigation waters would run out by the first week of June.

During a follow up interview on Friday, Casuga told the News-Bulletin the district might be able to keep ditches running until the third week of June. 

“Based on the water meeting today (Friday, May 27), we’re hopeful that while a lot of the native water will be gone somewhere in the second week of June, if we can get there, we plan to use San Juan Chama water to extend that out another week, week-and-a-half,” Casuga said. “If the best happens — outside of getting rain — we could get into the third week of June before we run out.”

The Building is Alarmed!

One a.m. The DMV building on 24th St. is experiencing an alarm, and flashing rhythmically. Jasper and I would sit and watch, but this is about the time in James Bond movies when fireballs appear, so we’ll head home instead.

 

RIP, Jim Seals

I saw Seals and Crofts in a peculiar double-bill with Jerry Jeff Walker at Red Rocks Amphitheater outside Denver, CO in 1976. Pretty locale, and we were hit by two thunderstorms during the evening:

Seals died at his home in Nashville, Tennessee on June 6, 2022, aged 79, after a long illness. 

 

 And here is an interesting article about "Summer Breeze."

It took a couple of years for Seals and Crofts to record “Summer Breeze” to their satisfaction, but when the song—with its catchy hook and indelible chorus evoking sunnier times—finally hit the airwaves, in 1972, Jim’s nostalgia became everybody’s. ... Their smiling, bearded faces were everywhere as soft rock was embraced by millions and ruled the pop charts for much of the rest of the seventies—even as it was reviled by critics, who pointed their fingers at Southern California as the likely source of this plague of mellow. 

Sitting in his house in tiny Rankin, Texas, a retired oil field roughneck and guitar player named Wayland Seals knew better. Wayland was Jim’s father, and he knew firsthand that L.A. wasn’t soft rock’s sole origin point. In fact, some of the genre’s deepest roots ran under the sidewalks and streets of the very town he lived in—and then pushed out through the barren fields of West Texas. It was a vast, desolate area, one that Wayland knew well, one where young men with pitch-black grit under their fingernails and dried mud in their hair dreamed of country music every day and played it every night.

World's Largest Plant

Cool!:

The world's largest living plant has been identified in the shallow waters off the coast of Western Australia, according to scientists.

The sprawling seagrass, a marine flowering plant known as Posidonia australis, stretches for more than 112 miles (180 kilometers) in Shark Bay, a wilderness area protected as a World Heritage site, said Elizabeth Sinclair, a senior research fellow at the School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute at The University of Western Australia.

That's about the distance between San Diego and Los Angeles.

The plant is so large because it clones itself, creating genetically identical offshoots. This process is a way of reproducing that is rare in the animal kingdom although it happens in certain environmental conditions and occurs more often among some plants, fungi and bacteria.

Killing The Mascots

I thought this was an interesting article. My (third?) cousin was a recent football hero at Timberline High School. He's attending classes at Boise State these days:

Timberline High School student Annie Birch Wright felt a connection to her school’s mascot because it wasn’t just another generic animal.

The mascot is the wolf, which led to a real pack of wolves living in the nearby Boise National Forest being named for, symbolically adopted by and studied at the high school.

“It is just a really cool thing to have,” said Birch Wright, who is a member of the school’s TREE Club, which stands for Teens Restoring Earth’s Environment. “It was a way for students to connect with the environment and wild species, especially because it is a wolf, which is our mascot, and because of how big of a role wolves play in our ecosystem.”

Before Birch Wright and her friends attended Timberline, some previous students even got to go on field trips with their teacher and a wolf tracker near Lowman, where they looked for wolves, listened for their calls, analyzed their scat and urine and followed their prints in the snow.

...Because of COVID-19 precautions and this year’s usually cold and snowy spring, Birch Wright hasn’t yet had the chance to go out tracking wolves from the Timberline pack in the Boise National Forest.

Now, she’s worried she will never get the chance to track her school’s pack. Based on information from a wolf tracker, Jordan told the TREE Club members that pups from the Timberline pack were killed in 2021, in the wake of the Idaho Legislature’s passage of Senate Bill 1211.

The 2021 law allows Idaho hunters to obtain an unlimited number of wolf tags, and it also allows the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to use taxpayer dollars to pay private contractors to kill wolves, including on public lands. Also in 2021, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission expanded the wolf hunting season and hunting and trapping methods.

“When our pack was killed, nobody knew about it at first, but when we were told by Mr. Jordan, it took all of our breath away. It hit hard,” Birch Wright said.

"Crimes of the Future"

I got real excited about seeing this movie at the Tower Theater, because it has Kristen Stewart in it. Stewart chooses the most interesting movies these days. Director David Cronenberg has a reputation for body horror, but hadn't directed a movie in a while. So, a lot of potential here for a great sci-fi movie. 

What a weird film! A world where pain and infection and even blood-letting are unknown. A world that develops a lust for amateur surgery, performance surgery, surgery on street corners, etc. Like tattoo culture, but much more extreme. 

The movie doesn't seem to be all that popular (68% on the Tomato Meter), but it is thought-provoking:

“Crimes of the Future” is a thinly conceived dystopian fantasy that offers its characters little psychology and little context, little view of the social order around them or the history that led them there; it displays ideas in isolation from their whys and wherefores. In this regard, it’s a classic “late film”—it’s the first feature that Cronenberg, who’s seventy-nine, has made since 2014, and what he has to say here he lays on the line with few of the blandishments of popular movies, and little of the aesthetic care of art-house ones. It’s a movie to have seen rather than to see. The ideas that Cronenberg puts forth are powerful and poignant; his subject is the effort to make art amid a despoiled cultural environment and debased cultural consumption. It’s a drama of eight years of silence, of a vision of the end of the line, the end of the world as he knew it. 

In the movie’s first dramatic scene, the boy’s mother, Djuna (Lihi Kornowski), finds the boy, Brecken (Sozos Sotiris), sitting on the floor of their bathroom, munching on a plastic garbage basket—which is telling, as “Crimes of the Future” is very much about the crimes of consumption and the system of production that led to them. The movie’s protagonists are a couple of artists, Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) and Caprice (Léa Seydoux), who live and work together. Saul, who has a sort of “accelerated evolution syndrome,” manages to generate inside himself—supposedly even wills into being—new internal organs of unspecified function or no function at all. In private, Caprice examines them invasively, by inserting an endoscopic-lens tube through his skin into his abdomen. Then, in public, their performances involve Saul lying passively on an “autopsy bed,” which Caprice manipulates, via remote control, to open him up and extract these new organs, to the hushed and breathless delight of their audience. (Though directing a film of body horror, Cronenberg tones down the gross-out, in quality and quantity, as if rendering it a mere symbol of itself.)

Hide-and-Seek

A nightmare in real life:

(CNN) A 9-year-old girl is recovering at a hospital in Washington state after being attacked by a cougar while playing hide-and-seek outdoors with her friends, according to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Lily Kryzhanivskyy was attacked Saturday as she jumped out to surprise her friends, the department said in a statement. The children had been attending a camp near Fruitland in northeastern Washington, about 70 miles from Spokane. 

Lily was taken to a hospital for treatment, where she is out of the intensive care unit and making an "amazing" recovery, her mother said in the statement.

Better Call Saul Presents: Slippin' Jimmy - "After Bedtime"

It's a bit high-concept, but I do like this animated spinoff from "Better Call Saul."

 

Tucson Regional Ballet - Recital Time!

Recital time in the Old Pueblo!

A Really Nice Video of Albuquerque in 1969 and 1970

A really interesting video. I would have been 12 and 13 years old at the time, and concerned mostly about launching model rockets.

I Think I'm Getting Better At Ballet

I've mostly been on a plateau since I started ballet in 1982, but after 40 years, I think I'm finally beginning to advance to a higher level. Thank you, Pam Kay Lourentzos!

I just need another 40 years to really get good.

Illegal Crabbing

Trouble in the Farallones:

A Bay Area man has been sued by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office for allegedly catching hundreds of Dungeness crabs illegally in the protected North Farallon Islands State Marine Reserve.

..."Our officers received an anonymous tip from a commercial fisherman who said he saw another fisherman’s crab traps in the Marine Protected Area. He was concerned that this fisherman’s illegal activities would put other law-abiding fisherman in a bad light," Fish and Wildlife Assistant Chief for the Marine Enforcement District Eric Kord said in a statement. "This is a large-scale incident of unlawful take from a Marine Protected Area, and we might not have known about it had another commercial fisherman not reported the illegal activity." 

Fish and Wildlife investigators allegedly discovered over 90 crab traps in the area, which they seized after "battling difficult sea and weather conditions." They say they released more than 250 Dungeness crabs from those traps back into the ocean.

...The district attorney's lawsuit alleges Tran gained an unfair business advantage by illegally fishing in a Marine Protected Area. It is a misdemeanor for commercial fishing operations to work in protected areas, punishable fines ranging from $5,000 to $40,000 for a first offense.

"Upon information and belief, this is the most egregious case of unlawful crabbing activity in San Francisco’s history, as well as the largest incident of unlawful commercial crabbing in any Marine Protected Area in the entire State of California," the lawsuit says.

SMUD Tree-Trimmers Hack Through The Treetops

I'm glad SMUD electric-utility contract tree-trimmers came through the tree tops of my back yard. I worried the top branches were beginning to get too close to the powerlines. Can't have any electrocutions or fires, can we? I told them to be very aggressive with the tree. I don't know if they heard me. I could barely hear them over the wood chipper, and they spoke mostly Spanish anyway. The workers thrashed past the utility lines, briefly knocked me off the Internet, and nearly knocked down the clothesline. The newly-trimmed tree looks funny, shaped like the letter "Y" rather than a decent oak tree, but I'm pleased. 

Waterwise, this is going to be a hard summer, just as precarious as 2015, and we need as much reassurance as possible.  I remember how a nearby palm tree burned in 2015 when I was away from the house.  It looked like a burned matchstick when I got home, and there was no explanation of how the fire started.  Fires will be so easy to start!  

Time Enough To Eliminate The Witnesses

The news out of Uvalde is so shocking it's hard to believe. Simple cowardice is an inadequate explanation. Governor Abbott repeated "the cops are heroes" story to the press before the whole story fell apart. It's looking more like the cops delayed entry in order to give the shooter more time to eliminate witnesses, in order to give the story added weight. I swear, Texas is run by the worst monsters on Earth.

They Too Bleed

I'm sorry, but I can't get upset about the massacre in Uvalde. It's been evident for decades, especially after Sandy Hook, that American political leaders, particularly Republican Senators, consider dead children to be collateral damage for being able to indulge their gun fetish. They consider themselves to be untouchable. And absolutely nothing will change until they are forcibly reminded that they too bleed. Then, and only then, will progress be possible.

Patrick Hernandez - Born to Be Alive (Moreno J Remix)

I just love mashups of movie musicals set to lively music. 1979, forever, s'all I'm saying.

 

Diamond Pushups

The homeless man towed a cart of cans as he approached Jasper and I on the sidewalk on our morning walk. The man set his cans aside, and apropos of nothing, suddenly fell into position and started doing about thirty diamond pushups. Jasper stumbled in distraction at the man breathing heavily on his level as we passed around him.

A Group of Assholes at the Birdcage Target

On Saturday, I was disturbed to hear that a group of assholes had set up a table at the Birdcage Target in Fair Oaks/Citrus Heights, promoting "Buck Fiden" materials, and the like. I repeatedly called the store, got no answer, but on the 10th call finally reached someone who stressed that the participants had been told to leave, that they had refused, that the police had been called, and that the store had been consulting with corporate headquarters for a proper response. In general, corporate stores will allow people to set up tables for gathering petition signatures and other civic-minded political activity, but this activity crosses the line. If you see any of this activity where you shop, complain, and loudly!

"Happening"

Sacramento's Tower Theater. I saw "Happening" last night. Good movie, but very disturbing.

I Blame This Woman For High Gas Prices in California

She was changing the numbers!

Covid Makes a Comeback

It news no one wants to hear, Covid is rising again in the U.S. Overseas, it's mostly still going down from the peaks last winter.

The Ankle Monitor's Albuquerque Origin

Curious story:

Jack Love was a lawyer, a prosecutor, a judge — and a fan of Spiderman.

In the comic strip that ran in newspapers on Tuesday, August 9, 1977, the villain Kingpin slaps an “electronic radar device” on Spiderman’s wrist, letting him track the friendly neighborhood superhero’s location. Love filed the idea away.

A few years later, University of Albuquerque criminologist Walter Niederberger got a phone call from the judge.

“He had read that and thought I was a forward-looking criminologist and would I be interested in doing the research if he could find funding,” said Niederberger.

He was interested, and as Love’s idea moved from comic-strip fancy to reality, so did a research grant from the National Institute of Justice.

By early 1983, Judge Love had begun piloting the technology with people convicted of nonviolent, low-risk crimes. Court personnel attached transmitters to their ankles, which were effectively used as a form of house arrest. Receivers were connected to land-based telephone lines and each morning, the judge could read over a report that showed potential violations.

Bad Picture of the Recent Lunar Eclipse

It was pretty cloudy, so I only got a good look at the moonwhen the eclipse was ending.

Bring An Euler's Disk To The Students at Thomas Edison

I was a guest-speaker for an Elective class (6th through 8th graders) at Thomas Edison Elementary School. I talked about the physics of spinning objects, particularly phenomena like precession, and brought an Euler's Disk for a classroom demonstration. Euler's Disks are interesting because precession accelerates as the disk spins down and rotation slows.

Working Hard on "Better Call Saul"

Determined three minor locations tonight. Minor they might be, but they were driving me crazy. First half-season finale next Monday. Second half starts in July. By the beginning of September, I'd like to be close to finishing the updates to my two books. But first, I'll have to visit Albuquerque to chase down a mind-numbing number of photos!

A Thought About Buffalo

After years of “reporting” on this supposed Great Replacement theory that the shooter cites in his manifesto, it’s as clear as it ever gets that FOX News is to blame for today’s massacre in Buffalo. 

You put the Theory out there and wait for someone to bite. Someone always does! 

Rupert Murdoch may as well have fired the bullets himself.

A Dream

One of the last things I do before bed is to take a last look at Facebook. 

Several nights ago, I recall reading about Donald Trump’s “hurricane gun” idea, a friend’s hospital stay, and Route 66. Then I slept, and my brain tried to make sense of what I had read. 

I dreamt that five hurricanes were approaching the U.S. coast, and that I had to get back to Albuquerque as soon as possible. Barefoot and wearing a hospital gown, I was pushing a walker and running at highway speeds, through Nevada and Arizona, trying to get home. As I awoke, after a 900-mile run, I was approaching the Sandia Mountains on Paseo del Norte at sunset, watching a rising crescent moon over the mountains as the rains closed in. Very pretty, but I was getting very weary. 

(I know, I know, you can't have a rising crescent moon at sunset. My bad.) 

Making sense of Facebook is hard for the brain.

The Fire Eating New Mexico is Still Eating New Mexico

So large! And not even including the fire in the San Mateo Mountains southwest of Magdalena.

A Different Idea About Coronado's Path

Here is an interesting video about one of those understudied, enduring mysteries: Coronado's exact path on his way to Cibola in 1540. The Arizona-New Mexico landscape can be interpreted in different ways, as can the original Spanish documents, which are a bit vague anyway because the Spanish explorers were in a new, unfamiliar land. This fellow mentions Nugent Brasher, so he is familiar with Brasher's work, but he places his path farther east than Brasher does. Which is all good for the purpose of debate. For me, for now, I stay faithful to Brasher's interpretation, which places Chichilticale west, not east, of the Chiricahuas.

 

"The Duke"

I saw this delightful film with Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren last Friday at The Tower Theater.

 

Yung L & Wizkid - Eve Bounce (Remix)

I'm still going and still liking LaToya's Dancehall Power Up (DHPU) on Thursday nights.

Here's one of the better recent Jamaican Dancehall songs we dance to.

 

Thomas Edison Elementary School Showcase and Family Night - May 6, 2022

These New Mexico Fires Are Huge

And it's not even really fire season. New Mexico is no different than Colorado or California with these off-season fires. People and forests have a hard time mixing.

Neighborhood Century Plant Stalk is a Year Old Now!

I had no idea they could last this long. I thought they are supposed to collapse after a few months. It looks blackened, battered, and weather-beaten, but there's no sign it'll collapse anytime soon.

"Mother And Child Reunion" - Paul Simon

A 1972 memory:

 

Half-Barrel Vaults in "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul"

In Vince Gilligan's universe, architecture may be used for humor. 

For example, after Ted and Skyler's tryst in BrBa "Green Light," we see a drawing on the wall of a half-barrel vault in a gallery such as you might find in a Romanesque church. Skyler complains that Walt is frustrating her efforts to throw him out of the house. 

In BCS "Hit and Run," we get a view of Gus' tunnel to his neighbors' house. We see a small-scale half-barrel vault. The message seems to be that, unlike that lunatic Walt, Gus knows best when and how to leave his house. 

Half-barrel vaults are rarely-used in either television series. Why they seem to be related to leaving the house is a mystery to me.

So Hard On The Dancers, Who Have To Choose

Devastating:

When ballet dancers are described as God's athletes, well, you could offer up Olga Smirnova as supporting evidence. She treads on air, coming in on little cat feet. She's a Russian prima ballerina—one of the world's leading dancers. But days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Smirnova pirouetted and stepped off her stage at the renowned Bolshoi Theater, with dramatic flourish. She took to social media to express her outrage. And then fled the country, the modern-day version of Nureyev or Baryshnikov defecting.

Jon Wertheim: When you sat down to write that social media post, what did you want to communicate? What did you want to say?

Olga Smirnova: I just couldn't keep it inside. I was so ashamed of Russia. This is the true. I'm not ashamed that I'm Russian, but I'm ashamed because of Russia started this action.

Jon Wertheim: I want to read what you wrote. You said you were against this war with every fiber of your being." But I now feel that a line has been drawn that separates the before and the after." 

Olga Smirnova: It's how I felt. 24th of February, this is, was the line, Because it's all changed. All changed. The reputation of Russia and Russian people, even if you are not a soldier, you're just Russian. It, it's all, it still make a shadow on you.

My All-Time Favorite Eighties Song

Signs of the Times

A Las Vegas Jigsaw Puzzle

I picked up this puzzle at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas when I was there for Ira's funeral at the beginning of February, 2022. 999 pieces (the last piece in the upper-left corner was unaccountably missing).  Classic Vegas!

Walking Jasper Around the Neighborhood

Tomorrow is Jasper's fourth birthday, and so he's getting more walks than usual. We walk all over the neighborhood. 

Here's an oddly-specific sticker on a car that was parked in front of the Sierra II theater. 

I'm constantly amazed at the number of people who approach us and tell me what a handsome dog Jasper is: at least three groups of people in front of Gunther's ice cream parlor, plus a homeless man passing by on a bicycle. A woman carrying a dog in her lap stopped driving for a moment on Fourth Avenue in order to point out Jasper to her canine. Jasper's a rock star! 

There have been a few odd moments in the neighborhood too. Jasper and I were walking along Freeport Blvd. when a vehicle stopped. Windows rolled down on the passenger side of the vehicle. "Please help us," the heavy-set driver said, pointing to a woman, his wife, sitting in the back seat. "We are from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, and we are low on fuel. Please, if you would, buy this ring so we can get gasoline." He removed a big, heavy, expensive-looking ring from his finger. Nevertheless, I never carry any money on our walks, so couldn't oblige. The disappointed folks rolled on. 

Then there was a punkish-looking young woman, with razor cuts embellishing her short hair, riding a bicycle. She stopped at the corner of 24th and X Street and started ripping the tips of limbs from a ornamental, succulent-looking shrub growing at the corner, and throwing the debris into the street. This plant attack looked all-wrong to me, so I approached her and asked her what she was doing. She smiled - apparently I looked harmless - and said it was time to prune the shrub. I couldn't tell if she belonged there, or not - I thought not, but I could be wrong - so Jasper and I kept on walking. Passing by the next day, it looked like the shrub is still intact, despite the abrupt pruning. Maybe it was time to prune the shrub?

Orrin Hatch Shuffles Off His Mortal Coil

What a dreadful man. Glad he's gone:

In any case, Hatch could routinely be the worst during Supreme Court nominations. He was outraged that Bork didn’t get confirmed. Moreover, he was on the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas hearings, where he read from The Exorcist to “prove” that Anita Hill had stolen her (obviously false natch) sexual harassment allegations from that book. 

In fact, few did more than Hatch to push the Republican Party toward extremism in the judiciary. He was a huge supporter of the nomination of Mr. Torture Memos himself, Jay Bybee, to the Ninth Circuit Court.

Father/Daughter Dance - Corina Bianca and Pepper Von

Lots of wonderful people here! Pepper Von, acclaimed fitness instructor, together with his daughter, Corina Bianca (former Sacramento Kings dancer and Assistant Director of Respiratory Care at a hospital in LA), at her recent wedding in Los Angeles. Tyehimba Kokayi plays Djembe drum. One of Pepper's other daughters appears to lead the group in dance too (possibly Gabrielle Perez).

Thinking I'll Wait

On Thursday, I talked with a surgeon about having an ablation procedure (via catheter from the groin to the heart) to address my heartbeat irregularity problems. It was an interesting discussion. 

There are at least two different types of irregularities that are affecting me - SVT and atrial fibrillation. The surgeon was keen to go after SVT principally. Nevertheless, there is a big element of trial-and-error in a SVT ablation procedure, and if their attempts to stimulate irregularities (in order to identify the areas that need to be ablated) fail during the procedure, they might not ablate anything at all. So, I could have all the risks of a procedure, and none of the benefits. They could instead go after the atrial fibrillation, of course, but there are possible risks to nerves and the esophagus that could leave me with permanent shortness of breath, even as the "problem" is technically "fixed." 

I have some shortness of breath now, but I can deal with it. I'm still doing ballet without much problem.  If the heart races out of control, I have medication to bring it back under control.  And there is always the ER.  And strange as it seems, there is also the possibility the SVT problem might disappear altogether. Heartbeat issues are strange like that.

So, I think I'll wait for awhile. If you do surgery, it helps to be 100% committed to doing it. Totally freakin' gung ho.  Right now, I'm at 50%.

Worried About the Tunnel Fire

Wow, Sunset Crater was completely burned over. Flagstaff forests are pretty dry, but despite their scattered nature, they have lots of underbrush:

(CNN) Hundreds of homes near Flagstaff, Arizona, have been evacuated as a fast-moving wildfire threatened hundreds of structures Wednesday after destroying at least two dozen buildings, officials said. 

The Tunnel Fire in northern Arizona's Coconino County had burned more than 19,700 acres as of Wednesday afternoon, according to InciWeb, a US clearinghouse for wildfire information. It was first reported Sunday afternoon.

The fire, about 14 miles northeast of Flagstaff, was rapidly moving to the northeast, pushed by significant winds, officials said. It had no containment as of Wednesday afternoon.

"I cannot stress enough how rapidly this fire is moving," fire management officer True Brown said.

Here's the Inciweb link.

Double Ridges

I just love reading stuff like this:

Ridges that criss-cross the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa indicate there are shallow pockets of water beneath, boosting hopes in the search for extra-terrestrial life, scientists said Tuesday. 

Europa has long been a candidate for finding life in our solar system due to its vast ocean, which is widely thought to contain liquid water -- a key ingredient for life.

There is a problem: the ocean is predicted to be buried 25-30 kilometers (15-17 miles) beneath the moon's icy shell. 

However water could be closer to the surface than previously thought, according to new research published in the journal Nature Communications.

The finding came partly by chance, when geophysicists studying an ice sheet in Greenland watched a presentation about Europa and spotted a feature they recognized.

"We were working on something totally different related to climate change and its impact on the surface of Greenland when we saw these tiny double ridges," said the study's senior author Dustin Schroeder, a geophysics professor at Stanford University.

They realised that the M-shaped icy crests on Greenland looked like smaller versions of double ridges on Europa, which are the most common feature on the moon.

...The scientists used ice-penetrating radar to observe that Greenland's ridges were formed when water pockets around 30 meters (100 feet) below the ice sheet's surface refroze and fractured.

"This is particularly exciting, because scientists have been studying double ridges on Europa for more than 20 years and have not yet come to a definitive answer for how double ridges form," said lead study author Riley Culberg, an electrical engineering PhD student at Stanford.

"This was the first time that we were able to watch something similar happen on Earth and actually observe the subsurface processes that led to the formation of the ridges," he told AFP. 

"If Europa's double ridges also form in this way, it suggests that shallow water pockets must have been (or maybe still are) extremely common."

NASA's Perseverance Rover Sees Solar Eclipse on Mars

Green Bud Holiday

You know it’s 4/20 when they’re lining up to break down the doors to the local marijuana dispensary. One fellow came out and said “It’s a f*n nightmare in there!” He didn’t look too scared, though.

Finally Getting Some Details on the Sacramento Mass Shooting

Two weeks of wondering what the hell happened:

At 1:57:02 a.m. April 3, surveillance cameras at 10th and K streets caught a crowd of 70 to 80 people gathering on the northeast corner of the intersection.

Eight seconds later, the crowd began to run. Some drove away in cars. A hot dog vendor ran away from their cart.

But Smiley Martin, his brother Dandrae and Joshua Hoye-Lucchesi stayed. They stood near Sharif Jewelers as a man dressed in black and standing next to Smiley Martin pointed north toward two other men: Mtula Payton and DeVazia Turner.

In less than three minutes, the shooting in downtown Sacramento began, with Smiley Martin reportedly firing 28 rounds from a fully automatic Glock 19 handgun and others returning fire until more than 100 shell casings littered the streets and 18 people were shot — six of them dead including Hoye-Lucchesi and Turner. Twelve others, including Smiley Martin, were wounded.

This description of how one of the largest shootouts in Sacramento history unfolded is contained in newly filed Sacramento Superior Court documents, which are based on homicide detectives scouring numerous video files and studying the events second by second as they search for the five people they say were involved in the gang battle.

The documents, filed Friday afternoon by Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert’s office, are largely focused on Smiley Martin, a recent parolee officials say they will charge with being a felon in possession of a handgun and of carrying a machine gun — the Glock with aftermarket auto sear — that night.

Martin is recovering at a Sacramento hospital. Deputy District Attorney Brad Ng filed the documents in a bid to see that Martin does not win his release on bail once he is booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail, where his brother Dandrae, 26, is being held on a weapons charge.

The court documents outline the gang affiliations attributed to five men at the scene that night, including the three who were killed, and provide a glimpse at how police came to decide the incident resulted from a gang dispute involving five shooters. Besides Turner and Hoye-Lucchesi, the four others killed in the melee were Sergio Harris, 38; Johntaya Alexander, 21; Yamile “Yami” Martinez-Andrade, 21; and Melinda Davis, 57.

The documents do not reveal the precise nature of the dispute, but note that three men — the Martin brothers and Hoye-Lucchesi — were seen together on an Instagram video posted hours before the shooting several miles away on Traction Avenue in Old North Sacramento.

The three were seen posing with two black handguns, one equipped with a high-capacity magazine, as well as a rifle, the documents say.

“In the video, filmed while the three men were in north Sacramento (territory claimed by the Del Paso Heights Bloods), both Joshua Hoye and defendant Smiley Martin discuss going to downtown Sacramento while armed to loiter outside nightclubs, display gang hand signs to the camera, point firearms at the camera, openly and repeatedly state their allegiance to the Garden Blocc Crips (“GBC”) and boast about shooting rival gang members,” the 13-page document says.

In the video, Smiley Martin can also be seen saying he cannot go into any downtown nightclubs because he is not carrying identification. The document identifies Smiley Martin, 27, and Hoye-Lucchesi, 32, of Salinas, as validated members of the Garden Blocc Crip, a gang that includes the 29th Street Crips.

After posting the video, the three made their way downtown, where cameras picked them up near Sharif Jewelers just before 2 a.m., the documents say.

SHOOTING BEGINS

“At 1:57:28 a.m., an individual in all black clothing, standing next to Smiley Martin, raised their right arm parallel to the ground while pointing northbound on 10th Street in the direction of Mtula Payton and Devazia Turner,” the documents say.

Payton, 27, is being sought by Sacramento police as one of the shooters and is identified in court papers as once having been a Garden Blocc Crip but later being validated as a G-Mobb member, which the documents say includes the Starz or Guttah Gas gang.

Turner, 29, of Carmichael, also is named in court papers as a G-Mobb member.

Five seconds after the man in black is seen pointing toward Payton and Turner, Payton turns to face the northeast corner of 10th and K and reaches toward his waistband, the documents say.

Then, Payton, Turner and two other people start approaching the corner where the Martin brorthers and Hoye-Lucchesi are standing, the court papers say.

At 1:58:36 a.m., Sergio Harris joins Payton, Turner and the other two men. Smiley Martin turns to face them, the documents say.

Harris, a father of three, is identified in the documents as a Del Paso Heights Blood, an ally of the G-Mobb gang.

One of the female victims pulls up in her car as the groups face off. Alexander, of Elk Grove, parks her car and walks to get her sister, who is standing near Harris by the jewelry store, the documents say.

“At 2:00:21 a.m., detectives observe that Smiley Martin is holding a handgun with an extended magazine in his left hand beside his leg,” the court papers say. “Three seconds later, Smiley Martin moves west toward the corner of the intersection.

“At 2:00:38 a.m., Devazia Turner and Smiley Martin are observed exchanging gunfire. During this exchange of gunfire, detectives were able to observe that Johntaya Alexander, Sergio Harris, Joshua Hoye, Yamile Martinez-Andrade (who was walking along K Street at the time of the confrontation between the two groups of men), and Devazia Turner were all struck by gunfire.”

The documents continue: “In the video surveillance footage, detectives observed that Smiley Martin fired multiple rounds from his firearm. A preliminary ballistics analysis indicated that the defendant Smiley Martin fired approximately 28 rounds.”

After the shooting, the Martin brothers ran toward the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament and detectives saw Smiley Martin on video tossing his handgun away in front of 1029 K St. just before officers stopped him in front of the cathedral, court papers say.

“While securing the scene, officers located the firearm that defendant Smiley Martin discarded: a Glock 19 handgun with an extended 30-round magazine, a tactical laser sight, and a full-automatic selector switch, making the firearm an illegal machine gun.”

The court filing is aimed at convincing a judge that Smiley Martin should not be released on bail once he recovers enough to be booked, and notes that another man arrested after being seen carrying a handgun near the scene was released before arraignment on $500,000 bail. Police have said they do not believe the man was involved in the shootings.

The court papers note that Smiley Martin “has demonstrated a life-time commitment to violence” and cannot be safely released into the public.

Judge Michael Savage agreed, signing an order Friday that says Smiley Martin cannot be released before he is arraigned and a hearing on the motion by the District Attorney’s Office to deny bail is heard

The DA’s filing contends Smiley Martin was not going downtown to visit a nightclub, but to commit crimes.

“As the defendant told his social media audience, he had no intention of going to nightclubs or bars that evening,” the documents say. “Instead, based on his lack of identification, his clothing, his prior gang-related statements, and his decision to come to downtown Sacramento with a loaded, illegal full-automatic machine gun equipped with an illegal high-capacity magazine, there is clear and convincing evidence that defendant Smiley Martin intended to engage in armed criminal action with an illegal firearm.

“Inevitably, when a conflict presented itself at the intersection of 10th Street and K Street, the defendant did not leave the scene. Instead, with a full-automatic Glock 19 drawn out in his left hand, the defendant stayed in front of the Sharif Jewelers, waiting for a confrontation with Mtula Payton, Devazia Turner, Sergio Harris and the other men they were with.”

Godspell "Beautiful City"

 

I was struck in Sutter Street Theatre's production of the 2012 revival of "Godspell" with how humanistic (rather than entirely religious) the lyrics of "Beautiful City" are. It's all the more remarkable considering that the song comes around the Last Supper. I'd like to be able to sing this song, in a humanistic way. Lyrics:

We can build

A beautiful city

Yes we can

Oh yes we can

We can build

A beautiful city

Call it out

And call it the city of man 

Curiosity Avoids a Field of Knives

Mars is a dangerous place for machines:

 

These rocks, known as ventifacts, are wind-sharpened rocks, and Curiosity has had a previous run-in with ventifacts before.

Early in the missions, Curiosity's wheels suffered some wear and tear after rolling over them. But there are more of these ventifacts in the field Curiosity came across on March 18 than the rover has ever encountered. They're made from sandstone, the hardest rock found by the rover on Mars to date. 

"It was obvious from Curiosity's photos that this would not be good for our wheels," said Megan Lin, Curiosity Project Manager at JPL, in a statement. "It would be slow going, and we wouldn't have been able to implement rover-driving best practices."

Vladimir Putin's "Blueberry Hill"

Vladimir Putin sings Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill" to various Hollywood celebrities in St. Petersburg in 2018:

 

Speaking To Graves

The coverage of the war in Ukraine has been excellent on Daily Kos, capturing not only the military news, but what it likely portends. 

There was a strange incident in Russia recently, where a large number of people driving earthmovers labeled "Z" gathered outside the graveyard to World War II's Katyn Massacre. In a speech directed to the graves on loudspeaker, the organizers announced they could easily erase the graves, but wouldn't do so because they were "good people." 

Creepy??? What on Earth does it mean? 

The Katyn Massacre was where the Soviets executed 20,000 Polish soldiers and officials. Stalin blamed the Nazis for the massacre. The truth was an open secret. The Russian government only reluctantly acknowledged responsibility for their actions in 1990. 

My guess is that even the Russians acknowledge limits on their ability to alter reality through official pronouncement. By erasing the graves the Russians could restore their innocence. Massacre? What massacre? They weren't going to do that - at least for now. But it's hard to miss the menace and threat. Today's Russians could get worse - much worse - but for the moment, they remain their amiable selves. Just don't defy them.

First, threatening to destroy graves makes you good? Second, who the hell are they talking to over that loud speaker? Ghosts?

Salad Bags

I talked to a dietitian about ways to improve my diet. I'm not big on fruit, but eating more salads seemed like an option. 

I confessed to her that I hate to eat salads that I make myself. My salads never seem to taste good. I much prefer to eat salads made by other people - people who have the imagination and experience to assemble the good-tasting ingredients that excite both rabbits and people. 

The dietitian suggested using those prepackaged salad bags that you find in supermarkets. A good idea!  So, I started chewing my way through salad bags. Life was good. 

I'm not sure what I'll do now that the place where the salad bags come from burned to the ground yesterday. I hope the salad bag industry is strategically-hardened, with more salad bag places scattered elsewhere. If worse comes to worse, I might have to make my own salads again:

Experts were waiting to see what kind of impact the fire will have to stores like Safeway and Walmart, which sell Taylor Farms packaged salads.

"To have something like this happen in a transition period is just tragic," said Steve Del Masso, owner of Bay Cities Produce Co. Inc. in San Leandro. "This is such an important time in California. All your major processors like Taylors are moving from Arizona, where they’ve been for 6 months to California."

Officials with Taylor farms said in a statement Thursday that they will shift production their 20 other locations around the country, including thief facility in Yuma, Ariz. '

"Our total production locations and geographic diversity is our best defense to this scenario," the statement says. "We will work to reassign and support our Salinas Foodservice production team this season as we rebuild the facility."

Alpha and Beta

Stressful among the birds today at the feeding spot. They are SO hungry! I shovel out the seed. I watched two pigeons bully a sparrow. A sparrow! No dignity left, it seems, among the rock doves. 

Here is a picture of two pigeons, Alpha and Beta, fighting over seeds. Alpha was very aggressive, and pushed out Beta. As I approached, I could see him sizing me up for battle. You don’t want that, tweety! I’m a hundred times bigger than you are. I can sit on you! Go away!

Genocidal Rage

We are living in dangerous times. It's pretty clear that the Russian failure to subjugate Ukraine has led to a rage that can be satisfied only by annihilating everyone. Stepping back from that brink will be hard. Even military necessity might not be enough:

Written by journalist and Kremlin-aligned political operative Timofey Sergeytsev and published in RIA-Novosti, the article answers the question posed by its headline: “What should Russia do with Ukraine?”

The answer, Sergeytsev writes, is total annihilation. He writes that “all who have associated themselves with Nazism should be liquidated and banned.”

Sergeytsev urges Russian soldiers to be merciless and force Ukraine to its knees and calls for more of the same inhumane tactics that took place in Bucha and the towns of Mariupul and Berdyansk.

...Sergeytsev’s piece merits close attention because RIA-Novosti is one of the three largest news agencies in Russia and has a mass circulation. It functions as a loyal mouthpiece of the Russian government and has an inordinate impact on what Russians see and hear about the war in Ukraine.

...Sergeytsev is an experienced Russian political operative who worked on behalf of the Russian government to prop up pro-Russian Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma in 1991. He also supported Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, whose questionable election victory, promoted by Putin, resulted in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004.

Sergeytsev is also a member of the Russian far right Zinoviev Club, named after Alexander Zinoviev. Zinoviev was a champion of Josef Stalin as a model leader, the murderous dictator who ruled the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953.

...In the invented world he describes in his article, Sergeytsev accuses both Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko and current President, Volodymyr Zelensky, of using “total terror” against the Russian “anti-fascists in Odesa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol and other Russia cities.”

As for the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lukhansk in Ukraine’s east, where pro-Russian separatists have fought Ukraine over the past eight years, Sergeytsev says they have been bravely rebelling “against Ukrainian Nazism.”

Sergeytsev calls for the destruction of all “Nazis that have taken up arms” and that they “should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield.”

He includes the Ukrainian armed forces, the national battalions, the territorial defense forces and “a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis” and “are also guilty.”

All “are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, and do not comply with laws and customs of war,” Sergeytsev writes.

...In order to achieve the ultimate goal of “de-Ukrainization,” Sergeytsev calls for a rejection of Ukrainian ethnicity and the peoples’ right to self-determination.

Echoing Putin, Sergeytsev writes that Ukraine has never been a nation state, adding that its attempts at becoming independent have led to “Nazism.”

Sergeytsev calls on all of Ukraine’s elite to be “liquidated” and “the social swamp which actively and passively supports it should undergo the hardship of war and digest the experience as a historical lesson and atonement.”

A Vote of Confidence

Mama Scrub Jay is back in this cypress tree for another year! I can hear her nestlings. Her choice is a vote of confidence. This is the closest safe location a bird can build a nest from my feeding spot - 25 feet, or so. With seeds covered, Mama Bird can focus on getting what baby birds really like - worms, spiders, and such.

A Different Kind of Campaign

Woke up from a strange dream. For a variety of technical reasons, Donald Trump wouldn’t be able to be a candidate on the 2024 Republican primary ballot. Instead, I would run in his place. I promise a “different” kind of campaign.