Intrusion (2021)

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Last updated: February 11, 2023


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Quick Summary:

(From imdb) After a deadly home invasion at a couple's new dream house, the traumatized wife searches for answers - and learns the real danger is just beginning. As she is trying to process the horror of what happened during the invasion and is trying to find peace in her own home again, she starts to realize that she might not know the people around her as well as she thought she did.( Laura_Ratings)

I found this movie to be very interesting - even hilarious at times, since I'm a native of Corrales, NM.  I was taken aback by the aerial views of the center of Corrales, featuring Sandoval Elementary School.  Even though I had spent SEVERAL YEARS of my life within the frame of the views, it took me a few seconds to recognize the place.  Didn't even really connect as a small town.  The storyline of Corrales as a small town collided head on with the big-city accoutrements of the film, plus the modern architecture of the main house, plus the current tourist fakery of the real Corrales these days.  I loved that cringing collision of values!

Freida Pinto - wasn't she in Slumdog Millionaire?  Great Movie!

Notes on Individual Scenes

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View of Manzanos from Q Studios

Jogger on roads out there

Modern House.  Roughly 9319 Signal Ave. NE  (35.183276°, -106.537105°)

Pix include Old Town Bandshell

Restaurant

House

School Counselor

View of Sandias from Q Studios

Morse of Corrales P.D.

Wife's office appears to be in the Aperture Center

etc.

Town of Corrales!  (Sandoval Elementary & Mr. Works)

Ex Novo Brewing Co., 4895 Corrales Rd.

Ex Novo Brewing Co., 4895 Corrales Rd.

Driving at night

Bobby Foster Road

Downtown Corrales/ St. Mary's Hospital sign - Crash

Workplace - 1600 ....

Driving to Eagle Point - roughly 6374 Desert Rd. SE (34.990213°, -106.655971°)

Mobile Home Park - Academy North Mobile Home Park, 6400 Caramel Dr. NE

View of South Valley

View of tower on West Mesa

Corrales PD - 205 N. Grant Ave.

Aerial of Corrales center

etc.

Dennis Chavez Blvd. (Google Earth crapped out before I got exact location, so this is approximate: (35.024336°, -106.778030°)

The Albuquerque House With a Secret

Just watched the movie "Intrusion" on Netflix, featuring an Albuquerque house with a secret. This is similar, but with a secret from the Sixties.

 

Liking This Infectious Dancehall Riddim - Dj Kaywise x Tiwa Savage - Informate

Zoo Babies

Rumor had it that there were new babies at the Sacramento Zoo. Sure, enough, there is a new baby flamingo, who spent some time practicing standing on one leg.  We could also see an egg, so maybe more flamingos are coming....

Here is a new momma mongoose lemur in her enclosure. Her baby was stuck like glue to her fur (and unfortunately, on her opposite side in this picture).

No Gum Recession

Time for the teeth cleaning. Patti the Dental Hygienist stepped aside to let Dr. Woo inspect her work in my open mouth. Dr. Woo gasped and exclaimed "No gum recession!" 

Like, it should be different? Maybe it is for many people! 

When my mother first took me to the dentist in the early Sixties, she took pains to make my visit as pleasant as possible. Her own dental experiences were miserable. Armed with dental diligence for her own kids, she wanted to kill that karma once and for all. 

No gum recession. It's a small victory, but many decades in the making, and I'll take it.

Deadly Illusions (2021)

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Last updated: February 11, 2023


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Quick Summary:

(From imdb) A bestselling novelist, suffering from writer's block, hires an innocent young woman to watch over her twin children. As the novelist dangerously indulges in her new best seller, the line between the life she's writing and the one she's living becomes blurred.

Notes on Individual Scenes

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Water - San Francisco area 

Copperfield's Books - According to imdb, the location is: 850 4th St, San Rafael, California, but it seems to be at 1200 4th St.

School entrance - ABQ Country Club

 

Morrison House - Felina House from Breaking Bad! 

 Sauna 

 Somewhere in Marin 

 Huntsman Enterprises 

 Elevator (Isleta Casino) 

 Shopping/Home/Gym 

 Fundraiser (probably Rancher's Club) 

 School performance 

 School again 

 Shopping Strip 

 Les Chantilly Fine Pastries and Cafe, 8216 Menaul Blvd. NE, at Hoffmantown Shopping Center (plus adjacent TLC Intimate Apparel) 

 Home again 

 Biking along Rio Grande 

 Seashore NW of the Golden Gate 

 ABQ Main Library! 

 Bay Area views 

 Elaine Fuller's Office 

 Body wheeled off 

ABQ Police Dept. exterior

Office for interview 

 

Bobby Foster Rd. 

Grace's Aunt - 533 Dakota St. SE

 

Shed 

Mental Hospital - Gibson Hospital 

Various thanks in credits to possible filming locations: 

Hoffmantown 

Hotel Parq 

Isleta Casino 

Laguna Blvd. 

ABQ Country Club 

Amy Biehl High School 

Bobby Foster Road 

Gibson Medical Center 

Hotel Chaco 

Kit Carson Park 

Journal Publishing 

Le Chantilly 

TLC Intimate Apparel 

Towneplace Suites 

Ranchers Club 

Crowne Plaza 

CABQ Riverside Park

Army of the Dead (2021)

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Last updated: March 7, 2023


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Quick Summary:

I had little patience for this zombie movie, despite the very-expensive special effects. So much CGI, it's hard to tell where the locations are at!

Notes on Individual Scenes

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Area 51 Gate at Double Eagle Airport (35.157073°, -106.796553°) 

Convoy on Atrisco Vista (35.130528°, -106.785809°) 

Explosion on what road? (Probably Highway 6). 

Various Vegas scenes - who knows? Could be Liberace Museum for a bit. 

Route 66 Bingo! 

Plus, Jack's Step-Inn Lounge

Las Vegas sign 

Lucky Boy Hamburgers 

etc. 

Ski-Hi Liquors, on Central Ave. NW 

Rail Yards 

Highway 6 (34.889116°, -107.075213°) 

Here are some photos of the mesa's edge just north of the coordinate location given above.

etc. 

Interestingly, Laguna Pueblo is mentioned in credits, maybe for the Highway 6 scenes.

The Wave (2019)

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Last updated: July 9, 2022


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Quick Summary:

Frank, an opportunistic insurance lawyer, thinks he's in for the time of his life when he goes out on the town to celebrate an upcoming promotion with his co-worker, Jeff. But their night takes a turn for the bizarre when Frank is dosed with a hallucinogen that completely alters his perception of the world, taking him on a psychedelic quest through board meetings, nightclubs, shootouts, and alternate dimensions. As Frank ping-pongs between reality and fantasy, he finds himself on a mission to find a missing girl, himself - and his wallet.

Notes on Individual Scenes

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The bar exterior is the El Madrid, under the Coal Avenue overpass at First Street. 

Not sure about the bar interior. Given the tiki references, wondering if it's the new (but closed) Burt's Tiki Bar on Central. Still, there's that stairway to a second level. 

I haven't worked out the Party House yet. 

The Taxi Pickup site is roughly 8912 Corona Ave. NE. (35.180039°, -106.543359°) 

In an amusing twist, Frank's House, which is supposedly way on the other side of Los Angeles in the movie, is actually just around the corner, at 8908 Corona Ave. NE. 

Brief views of Roosevelt Park? The Alley behind Lindy's Diner? 

Somewhere out at White Sands. 

Drug dealer approaches car. On First Street. (35.078744°, -106.649093°) 

The "Bar Sign" Parking Lot adjacent to El Madrid. 

The Workplace Lobby definitely appears to be the lobby of the Journal Publishing Company. I assume that the rest of the workplace is also at the Albuquerque Journal. Apparently the Journal is getting into the movie business.

Euphemisms for Slavery

Hundred of years of employment opportunities:

Involuntary relocation.

That’s one of the euphemisms a group of educators in Texas came up with as part of the curriculum that would introduce the transatlantic slave trade to second-graders.

Now, fortunately the Texas State Board of Education rejected “involuntary relocation” — which sounds more like what happens when your car gets towed, not centuries of government-sanctioned kidnappings. But the fact remains that these educators are tasked with finding a way to make slavery sound less slavery-ish.

...Then again, Texas is where a ninth-grade social studies textbook rebranded the enslaved as immigrant workers, in a caption that read: “The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” Because slavery wasn’t an inhumane institution; it was hundreds of years of employment opportunities in a foreign country.

...Take Gov. Greg Abbott for instance. He’ll be 65 in November — born in 1957 and educated in Texas. The Dallas Morning News used to publish a little comic strip called Texas History Movies, which began in 1926. As the title suggests, the strip was designed to teach young readers about the state’s beginnings. Teachers from across the state started incorporating the comic strip to supplement their lesson plans. For 30 years it was distributed to students in the state. Among the whitewashing hits: Gen. Gordon Granger freed the slaves in 1865 and “the law provided for the education of Negroes even while they were slaves.”

You can see how “immigrants flocking to the Republic of Texas” got into the classroom. Or why someone like Abbott, who was alive while Texas History Movies was still being sent to classrooms, is not a fan of the 1619 Project.

W. Caleb McDaniel, who won the 2020 Pulitzer for history, said of the full hardback edition of the comic strip: “It contained no mention of the over 200,000 slaves living in Texas at the beginning of the war, and no mention even of emancipation after the war.”

...Pick any era — from the Civil War to Reconstruction to the civil rights movement to whatever the hell we’re living through today — and with each turn of history’s page there are countless examples of white people fighting systemic racism. Heroes worthy of honoring and remembering in the history we teach our children.

That’s the history Toth is afraid might be taught.

Celebrating the Fourth

Ummmm. pic.twitter.com/XOESbiyjV9

— Cody (@new_orleansjazz) July 6, 2022

American Sausage Standoff (2019)

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Last updated: July 9, 2022


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Quick Summary:

In the rural-as-heck town of Gutterbee, ex-con Mike Dankworth McCoid (Antony Starr) and German orphan Edward Hofler (Ewen Bremner) dream of opening their own sausage house. Gutterbee’s local cabaret host and self-appointed spokesperson Jimmy Jerry Lee Jones Jr. (W. Earl Brown) intends to prevent the establishment's existence, lest invaders soil the area’s reputation. Mike and Edward march onward in the face of prejudice, winning over townsfolk with their juicy meats while Jimmy does his best to deter the duo’s motivations. A tale as old as national traumas, one that encapsulates America’s crustiest defenders and the harm their hatred causes.

This is a strange and interesting movie about the strange characters found in American rural towns - far stranger than what you find in cities. Roy, NM, in northeast NM, plays the town of Gutterbee.

Notes on Individual Scenes

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Various Gutterbee scenes (Harding Co. General Store; Floersheim Mercantile Co.) are on Richelieu St. (NM Highway 39), such as intersections of 2nd & Richelieu and 3rd & Richelieu. 

The only Albuquerque scene appears to be the former Westside Jail, where Mike goes free. 

Jimmy and the Lords Joyful Hall of Music is about 420 Richelieu St. 

Edward's German Restaurant appears to have been specially-built for the purpose. Location is about: (35.941890°, -104.197130°). 

Bar is at 4th & Richelieu. Sheriff Dept. is at 3rd St. (NM Highway 120) and McKinley St. Church is on 2nd St. 

Edward's speech is 3rd & Richelieu. 

Two Sausage Standoff is at 2nd St. & Champlain St. 

Initial cemetery scene may be the Roy cemetery. I'm thinking the final cemetery scene is actually at Wagon Mound Cemetery - needs to be confirmed.

Otero County Idiots Beg The County For Help

Otero County is not impressed:

SANTA FE – Otero County commissioners on Friday rejected a plea by one of their colleagues, Couy Griffin, for taxpayer-funded legal representation as he fights a lawsuit seeking his removal from office.

Griffin – who was convicted of the misdemeanor offense of entering restricted grounds at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 – faces a legal complaint alleging he should be barred from holding public office for participating in the insurrection.

Griffin, in turn, maintains he was simply engaged in peaceful protest and was wrongly convicted.

His defense sparked laughter from members of the audience Friday as he made the case for county legal representation and said it was time to take a stand against “tyrannical Marxists” who want to take away freedom.

“Look this is hard enough without you all laughing,” Griffin said at one point in the meeting.

The other two members of the commission voted against authorizing county representation. Griffin didn’t vote.

Otero County Attorney Roy Nichols said the commission was prohibited by law from providing Griffin’s legal defense in the case, partly because of evidence that Griffin visited Washington, D.C., in his personal capacity, not as part of his duties as a county commissioner.

“It’s pretty black and white here, Couy, it really is,” Commissioner Vickie Marquardt said. “I know you’re in a bind.”

Fireworks and Air Quality

Fireworks are awful for air quality. It's the only time of year that airborne phosphorous levels become a problem. Los Angeles suffers particularly:

“Fine particulate matter levels on July 4 and July 5 are typically among the worst days of the year in the South Coast Air Basin,” the advisory said. “The smoke and combustion products from fireworks add to the fine particles already present in the basin that are primarily caused by motor vehicles, as well as fugitive dust and industrial emissions.”

...The aftermath from this year’s fireworks doesn’t yet appear quite as bad as in 2020 or 2021, said Scott Epstein, air quality assessment program supervisor at the AQMD. The effect of fireworks on air quality is typically a function of the intensity or number of fireworks, as well as the weather on July 5, he said. 

“It looks a little bit cleaner than last year, but I hesitate to use the word ‘clean,’ because it’s not clean,” Epstein said. He said wildfires are the only other events that can compromise air quality as fireworks do.

Lost Duck

Driving along a suburban Sacramento street as fireworks filled the nighttime sky and explosions echoed off the houses. What’s that walking in the middle of the street in the distance? A confused female duck. I just hope she can find her way home.

Trouble Shipping Out The Almonds

Supply chain woes:

“It’s all about money,” Phippen, 72, said, shaking his head in frustration on a recent hot and sticky morning. “After years of prospering together, foreign shipping vessels have decided to stop servicing us.”

Now, the powerhouse almond industry is in a pickle. Roughly 7,600 California farms produce 82% of the world’s almonds. But they don’t get paid until their product gets delivered in robust markets like the European Union, China, India and the United Arab Emirates.

As a result, the prospect of harvesting 2.8 billion pounds this year — just shy of the 2.9 billion pounds in 2021 and the record 3.1 billion pounds in 2020 — has industry leaders both excited and worried. That’s because about 1.3 billion pounds of unsold almonds are still sitting in piles at processing and packing facilities.

The problem comes at a time when inflation and a historic drought are pushing the costs of production and water supplies to an all-time high, and the price of almonds has fallen to an all-time low of about $2 per pound. It’s a sharp reversal for the industry after four decades of relentless expansion across 1.6 million acres in California’s agricultural Central Valley from Tehama County to southern Fresno County. 

“We’re running into a delivery and cash-flow crisis,” said Aubrey Bettencourt, chief executive of the Almond Alliance of California. “From last September to February, the almond industry lost $2 billion in value — that’s a lot of money that’s not going into our communities.” “If we can’t tackle this problem,” she added, “our products will be replaced with something else.”

Just a Few Pictures From Broadway Cruise - June 4, 2022

The cruisers were celebrating after getting the law changed:

Olivia Fonseca stood near her light blue 1952 Chevrolet Deluxe, parked along Broadway late Saturday afternoon in Sacramento.

Four days earlier, Fonseca appeared virtually as a member of a group that had formed in recent months, the Sacramento Lowrider Commission, urging City Council to end Sacramento’s 34-year anti-cruising ordinance, which council quickly unanimously agreed to do.

And now, with an assortment of classic cars starting to slowly maneuver up and down the boulevard, near the 4 p.m. start for an event planned before the council’s action, Fonseca and others could celebrate.

“My gosh, it’s liberation,” Fonseca said. “That’s what it means ... you don’t have this fear factor that we’re out here and we’re going to get stopped and we’re going to get a ticket.”

Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis"

I love Baz Luhrmann movies, so I was eager to see his "Elvis" (played by Austin Butler).  The movie was just as kinetic as I hoped. Luhrmann has an eye for choreography and speed - better than anyone in the business - and I loved what he did!

Some critics note that the story is somewhat incoherent.  When you go fast, the plot is less important.  Speed is what's important.

I didn't realize until the end credits that Col. Tom Parker was played by Tom Hanks.  Wow! Who knew?

One of my Facebook friends notes that Austin Butler and Vanessa Hudgens came into her store in Albuquerque back in 2015.  That's just amazing - like they're real people, or something!

 

Oh, and the critics? They get their say too.  Nothing wrong with what they say. Thing is, they are slow. Elvis is fast:

The latest entry in the Elvis-making canon is Baz Luhrmann’s cacophonous, fitfully entertaining, and mostly pointless Elvis. Like much of Luhrmann’s work, Elvis is a hyperactive, showy, and gleefully un-subtle affair. Elvis’ Elvis is played by Austin Butler, who does his best with the script he’s given and admirably avoids the pitfalls of impersonation, but whose naturalistic and introspective approach to the role never quite jibes with the garish, near-hallucinatory world of the film.

…From Parker’s early narration we’re meant to gather that Presley was the Colonel’s “snow job” par excellence, a strange conceit from which to introduce all the hagiography that’s to follow. Are we supposed to believe that Elvis was some once-in-a-century musical visionary, or a canny fraud perpetrated on a world full of rubes? Most reasonable music fans would probably argue that the answer is neither; Luhrmann’s film seems to suggest that it’s somehow both.

In its first hour or so, the movie gamely hits all of the familiar beats of Presliography: the staggering early Sun sessions, the subsequent contract with RCA, the scandalous television performances, the military conscription, the death of Elvis’ beloved mother. This period of Elvis’ life is far and away the most interesting—indeed, this period of Elvis’ life is the reason he remains one of the most famous people of the 20th century—but the movie oddly rushes through it, as though it has somewhere else it needs to be. Conversely, an inexplicable surplus of time is spent on Elvis’ 1968 “Comeback Special” which the film seems intent on depicting as some sort of career pinnacle, a silly attempt to insinuate Elvis into the late-1960s counterculture.

…The frantic, kitchen-sink nature of all of this lends an overarching glibness to the film, which is almost an impressive feat given its 159-minute running time. In particular, the movie’s approach to race—surely the most controversial and forever unsettled aspect of Elvis’ legacy—is gallingly obtuse. … The movie’s depictions of Black music-making often feel flagrantly racist, shot after leering shot of carnal, frenetic ecstasy, while whole traditions like gospel, blues, and R&B are reduced to raw material for Elvis to bring forth to benighted white masses. One especially strange scene features Elvis fleeing hordes of fans to catch Little Richard performing “Tutti Frutti” in a small club in Memphis, an encounter the movie depicts as a moment of Promethean discovery for Elvis. But “Tutti Frutti” was already a national hit before Elvis had even released a single on RCA; many Americans, white and Black, had heard Little Richard before they’d ever heard Elvis Presley. 

…It’s odd, then, that Elvis’ most flummoxing flaw is an inclination towards a sort of characterological moralism. For all the feedback-drenched electric guitars and trap-inspired 808s on the film’s soundtrack, the most anachronistic element of Elvis is its cloying need to assure us that its hero was a good person, as if trying to preemptively counter some imagined onslaught of TikToks about why Elvis Presley is problematic. The movie goes to pains to depict Elvis as a man of liberal conscience who is deeply moved by the various political and social crises facing the United States in his lifetime but whose activist inclinations are repeatedly thwarted by the dastardly Parker. (The film studiously avoids any whiff of the later-in-life Presley’s obsessions with law-and-order conservatism.)

Cassidy Hutchinson's Testimony

The law-and-order President:

When Trump arrived at a rally on January 6, he saw that the space for the speech was not totally full, Hutchinson testified today. Ever attentive to optics, he wanted the area filled, but many attendees were outside a cordon, because they weren’t allowed in: The Secret Service had set up magnetometers, or mags, and these people were carrying weapons. They didn’t want to disarm, and couldn’t enter while carrying. But Trump didn’t care.

“They’re not here to hurt me,” he said, according to Hutchinson. He demanded that the Secret Service “take the fucking mags away,” and added, “They can march to the Capitol after this is over.” 

That is the most damning moment to emerge from the hearings so far. Trump’s supporters’ defense of the president’s behavior that day up until now has been that he simply wanted a peaceful demonstration, and didn’t anticipate the violence that broke out when his supporters stormed the Capitol. Some allies have denied that demonstrators were even armed. The defense has never been especially plausible, but Hutchinson’s testimony demolishes it.

Original Intent My Ass

The Supreme Court now dictates to the country whatever FOX News says:

Rather, the purpose of this undead constitutionalism is to present contemporary right-wing positions on consequential matters as eternal and constant, and therefore the only legitimate interpretations, when they are entirely malleable and dependent on changes in conservative political identity. The majority’s supposed originalism is a means to affirm novel legal interpretations grounded in present-day right-wing grudges as what the Constitution demanded all along. Every time those grievances shift, the interpretations will shift with them, even as the justices scour history anew for confirmation of ideological conclusions they would never question even if they failed to find it. That is ultimately why no rights that Americans currently possess are safe from this Court.

Interesting LA Times Article on New Mexico's Rising Profile in the Abortion Wars

While assembling my Albuquerque filming locations page, I recall watching a recent movie about the Center for Reproductive Health. The very best to them:

The court’s ruling is drawing this state deeper into a intensifying culture war that has shaped American politics and challenged a woman’s right to abortion for decades. As many states, most controlled by Republican legislatures, have restricted access over the years, New Mexico and others, including Colorado and Illinois, have become safe if at times tense havens for those seeking to end their pregnancies.

New Mexico is something of an anomaly: 49% Hispanic and Latino, largely rural, traditionally Catholic and yet reliably blue, including a friendliness toward LGBTQ communities. The state has no gestational limits or waiting periods for abortions, and it does not require parental consent for minors who want to undergo the procedure. Many New Mexican women who seek abortions travel from their small towns to urban centers, where they will now compete with rising numbers of women from out of state. 

More than 5,800 abortions were provided in New Mexico in 2020, the most recent year available, an increase of 32% from 2019. Given the 2021 passage in the adjacent state of Texas of Senate Bill 8, known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, and the Supreme Court ruling, experts estimate the state’s figures for 2021 and 2022 to increase wildly. The influx will challenge the state’s capacity to meet demand.

The U.S. Maternal Mortality Rate is Rising Dramatically

I bet the Republicans are involved somewhere:

Everything here is nuts. The Black maternal mortality rate is nearly 3x higher than the white rate. And the maternal mortality rate for everyone has nearly tripled since the late '90s. Meanwhile, in Europe, the maternal mortality rate has been steadily dropping and is now about one-third the US rate.

The big kicker is this: No one knows anything. No one knows why the rate has been skyrocketing. No one knows why the Black rate is so much higher than the white rate—while the Hispanic rate is a bit lower. In fact, we don't even have good data for the period from 2005-2018, so you'll see lots of different estimates for those years. (However, the big spike over the past three years comes direct from the CDC, which finally released new data a couple of years ago. It was the first in over a decade.) 

And we're still in the dark about why Black women suffer such an astonishingly high rate of maternal mortality.

Been Working on My Two "Breaking Bad"/"Better Call Saul" Books

Hoping for release by September. I need to go to ABQ to get pictures as soon as BCS ends. Trying to get the manuscripts ready in the meantime. I swear, it's like working on two dissertations at the same time.

Nice Article in Vanity Fair About "Better Call Saul"

Nice news that Carol Burnett will be in Season 6 of "Better Call Saul," plus this great article on the cinematography in Season 6 of the show so far. (Thanks, Kate!)

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!

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.