Flight From Sacramento To Phoenix - February 21, 2023

Just after takeoff from Sacramento Metropolitan Field (SMF), with a view of Interstate 5.

Interstate 5/ Highway 99 interchange, North Natomas.

North Natomas.  Pepper Von's Step One Dance Studio is labeled with a yellow oval.

Dry Creek drainage, looking not-so dry.

Interstate-80 corridor/Capitol City Freeway interchange/Auburn Blvd., with McClellan Field.

Effie Yeaw Nature Center along the American River.

Lake Natoma and Folsom Lake on the American River.

Folsom Lake and the City of Folsom.

Bonell Bay on Lake Mead,

Farther up the Colorado River on Lake Mead.

Colorado River/Lake Mead, near Meadview, AZ.

Grand Canyon West/Hualapai Indian Reservation.

Grand Canyon West/Hualapai Indian Reservation/ Route 66 near Truxton, AZ.

Side canyon leading to Grand Canyon/ Mesquite Springs.

Interstate 40.

Brocken Bow with airliner shadow on thin overcast below.

Brocken Bow with airliner shadow on thin overcast below.

Chino Valley, AZ.

Prescott Valley, AZ.

Spring Valley, AZ.

Highway 69/Interstate 17 interchange near Cordes Lakes, AZ.

Badger Springs, on Interstate 17.

Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum, Cave Creek, AZ.

Linde Gas and Electric TSMC Project.

Central Arizona Project near Deem Hills Recreation Area.

Arrowhead Lakes.

Cactus High School.

Cactus High School.

Highway 60 corridor.

Desert Sky Mall on Thomas Rd.

Interstate 10/ Highway 202 West interchange.

Interstate 17.

Arizona Supreme Court.

Downtown Phoenix, with North Central in the distance.

Interstate 10.

New Mexico Hiatus

Off to trip the light fantastic in Albuquerque!

The Intruder in My Home

How can I explain this? Maybe the real-time Facebook post:

Idiot Conservatives and Their Latinx

Idiots always:

When I recently pointed out on Twitter the irony of conservatives lambasting a term like “Latinx” — which emerged organically from a maligned community — in favor of “Hispanic” — a designation that the federal government codified in the 1970s — you’d think I had just beat up a Donald Trump piñata at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. 

The argument by conservatives that they’re opposed to “Latinx” because Latinos don’t care for it is laughable, considering a majority of Latinos want amnesty for immigrants in the U.S. illegally, yet the GOP is as build-the-wall as ever. It also obscures the reason behind the right’s sudden interest in trashing “Latinx”: fear.

Hobbyists' Balloon In Peril

Paranoia:

A small, globe-trotting balloon declared “missing in action” by an Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain one of the three mystery objects shot down by four heat-seeking missiles launched by U.S. Air Force fighters since Feb. 10.

The club—the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB)—is not pointing fingers yet. But the circumstantial evidence is at least intriguing.

The club’s silver-coated, party-style, “pico balloon” reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska, and a popular forecasting tool—the HYSPLIT model provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—projected the cylindrically shaped object would be floating high over the central part of the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11. That is the same day a Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same general area.

RIP, Raquel Welch

A force of nature is now gone.

The Peppers Have No Flavor

The clerk was trying to up sell me on my Philly Cheesesteak fixings. 

“Want some peppers? he asked. “What do they taste like?” I replied. “Oh, the peppers have no flavor,” the clerk answered. 

I found this to be irresistible. Even the mildest pepper has a flavor. So, I got the Peppers, and sure enough, they had no flavor whatsoever. 

Truth in advertising.

Wait - There is a Cloth!

The Elderly Men Scatter

I don’t have a poker face. I was going through the Safeway self-checkout and the employee monitoring the area immediately asked, “What’s wrong?” ”This,” I replied, as I handed her what I found on the floor: a bundle of money and credit cards held together by a clip. Mortified, she said, “It must belong to that elderly man that was just here!” She ran out into the parking lot and started chasing down elderly men, who all scattered, not wanting to get blamed for whatever new nonsense was up.

Ballet 422

An excellent suggestion by Kate! 

A wonderful premiere at New York City Ballet. and an intricate rehearsal process, and all captured on film. Justin Peck, choreographer. Available now at Amazon Prime (but will soon disappear). 

Just another reminder that ballet is the best thing on Earth!

Trampsta - Chunky (Old Dancing Movies Video)

I always like dancing-movie videos:

 

Title 42 Is All About Creating An Artificial Crisis

I was up to my favorite pasttime, tweaking rightwingers on Facebook, when I noticed how government statistics are now jacked to make the border with Mexico look like an absolute disaster. The particular rightwing claim was: "In January 2020 there were a total of 16,182 illegal crossings compared to 206,239 in January 2022." That sounds really terrible - a huge increase. Bad Joe Biden! 

But wait! The Jan. 2020 number is apprehensions only. The Jan. 2022 number is apprehensions plus expulsions. Starting with the pandemic in Mar. 2020, the numbers exploded with Title 8 and Title 42 expulsions - people who otherwise would have been allowed to cross legally into the U.S. to apply for asylum. The number of "illegal crossings" may not have gone up at all. Maybe the number of "illegal crossings" actually went down. Who knows? You'd have to really get into the statistical weeds to tell if things were getting worse, or not. 

So, apples and oranges. It only looks like a crisis if you first deliberately jack the statistics to manufacture a crisis out of it. Still, things probably aren't as bad today as they were under G.W. Bush. 

With statistics like these, you can hide anything. The border with Mexico might actually be a land of theme parks, candy canes, and unicorns, but with all the Title 42 expulsions, the border looks like a disaster. 

Maybe the Border Patrol wants to manufacture a crisis, and manage it, in perpetuity. Maybe that's what Title 42 is all about; feathering nests.

RIP, Burt Bacharach

Pronouncing The Names of the Four Sacred Navajo Mountains (+2)

I have a terrible Navajo accent.  Mount Taylor kills me.  Heck, they all kill me.

 

Betty Booom & J Fitz - Puttin' on the Ritz

Biden Plays the Republicans for Fools

Best State of the Union speech in American history!

 

Making Nuclear Power Smaller, Safer, and Agile

Here's an interesting article about rethinking nuclear power by making it smaller, safer, and agile. Kairos Power in Albuquerque is based in the same building used in "Better Call Saul" for housing German workers building the Superlab:

kairos power’s new test facility is on a parched site a few miles south of the Albuquerque, New Mexico, airport. Around it, desert stretches toward hazy mountains on the horizon. The building looks like a factory or a warehouse; nothing about it betrays the moonshot exercise happening within. There, digital readouts count down the minutes, T-minus style, until power begins flowing to a test unit simulating the blistering heat of a new kind of nuclear reactor. In this test run, electricity, not uranium, will furnish the energy; graphite-encased fuel pebbles, each about the size of a golf ball, will be dummies containing no radioactive material. But everything else will be true to life, including the molten fluoride salt that will flow through the device to cool it. If all goes according to plan, the system—never tried before—will control and regulate a simulated chain reaction.

RIP, Carolyn Gregory

Shocked to hear, and sorry, because I didn't know she was sick. She was a kind soul, and a great fan of theater.

Another Shot at the Skates

Can't Fill Lakes Powell and Mead Again, Ever

This is a most-interesting chart, which shows water storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, by decade, since 1970. The point of the chart is to illustrate just how far gone the Colorado River system is now. Water demand is so high now (particularly after the Central AZ Project and the Southern NV Water Authority were completed), and inflow so low, that no expert anticipates being able to see both reservoirs full again in their lifetime. Look at that big drop from 2000 to 2005! Filling the reservoirs now would require six extremely-wet years in a row. Not likely to happen:

Demand for Colorado River water picked up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile-long water delivery system, brings water from the Colorado River to Arizona’s most populous counties and wasn’t completed until the 1990s. The Southern Nevada Water Authority was created in 1991.

Arizona began starting to take its full apportionment of river water in the late 1990s, and Nevada in the early 2000s. California continues using the single largest share of the river. 

“Now the water use is maxed out. Every state is taking too much, and we have to cut back. And so there’s just not enough. You would need wet year after wet year, after wet year after wet year, after wet year. Even then, because the demand is so high, it still wouldn’t fill,” Hasencamp said in an interview.

Parov Stelar - Candy Girl (Late Night Mix)

Ballet on the brain.

 

The Chinese Balloon Hullabaloo

It Could Have Been a Party

But it wasn't:

A power outage and a social media post led to a 250-person fight over “free food” in a grocery store dumpster, Texas authorities said.

An H-E-B grocery store on the southeast side of Austin experienced a “sustained power outage” and had to throw out a large amount of perishable food on Thursday, Feb. 2, the company told CBS Austin in a statement.

Someone noticed the food in the grocery store dumpster and posted about the “free food” on social media, Travis County Constable George Morales III said in a Facebook post. 

Over 250 people arrived at the grocery store and began fighting in the dumpster over the discarded food, Morales said. Videos of the scene showed people in the dumpster grabbing food and tossing it into waiting carts.

High, High Natural Gas Prices in California

The first decent explanation I've heard regarding the astonishingly-high, bankruptcy-worthy natural gas prices in California these last two winters:

But why? We've had cold winters before, and the price of gas has increased only modestly. The answer is related to a seeming mystery: December prices were also well above average in 2021 even though winter was fairly warm that year. That doesn't make sense. 

The problem was a pipeline from Texas that exploded in Coolidge, Arizona, earlier in the year and killed a person. The pipeline is operated by Kinder Morgan, and another one of their pipelines had exploded in Tucson in 2003. For this reason, the town of Coolidge was none too eager for the pipeline to reopen, and the NTSB was cautious too because they couldn't figure what caused the explosion. This cut off one of California's sources of natural gas, which made it difficult to get enough supply during winter months.

Feeling the Junkie Energy

I was walking Jasper down the sidewalk towards Broadway in Sacramento this morning, smartly carrying my pooper scooper with me like a good citizen should, when I felt a sudden push from behind on the business end of the scooper. A man in a hoodie hurriedly pushed past both of us. Vibrating with intensity, he aimed for the convenience store. I could feel junkie energy radiating from him. I felt a bit embarrassed too, since I'm sure he must have gotten doggie doo on his hoodie. 

As Jasper and I approached the convenience store, the hoodie guy suddenly emerged from the store and approached us. He had strings of snot caught in his mustache and beard. He held up a cigarette lighter. "Do you have a cigarette?" he asked. I replied I didn't smoke. "Can you buy me a cigarette?" he asked. I replied I had no money on me. "Do you have ten dollars?" he asked. I shook my head. He seemed to be put off by my negative responses, and scurried away. 

Just then, a woman standing near the homeless encampment across the street started screaming at her legs. She quickly removed her pants. Fortunately she had a second layer of tights underneath - a necessity when sleeping outside in the cold these days. Still, she rolled her tights up, bent over, and continued screaming at her bare legs. It was quite unclear what the trouble was. 

Then Jasper started barking at imaginary squirrels under the nearby hedges. The screaming and barking continued. No one seemed fully in touch with reality. Maybe this is what comes from drinking coffee. Too much frenetic morning energy.

The DART Mission to Dimorphos

I didn't blog about this at the time - too busy - but the DART mission to Dimorphos was the most interesting space event of 2022. The second half of this video is great!

 

The Downside of Being a Forest-Green Rotary Telephone from the 30s

I dreamt that I was attending some kind of Comicon, and was walking around a many-seated auditorium when the lights suddenly went out for a big musical performance about railroad porters in the 1930s. I fumbled my way through the darkness into a seat that had been kept empty for a quick costume change, and had a costume dropped on me. So, dressed as a forest-green rotary telephone from the 30s, I was ushered into an office where Vince Gilligan was working on a script, and where an alt-journalist from Hungary was already waiting. An assistant asked Gilligan if he would like to talk to us, but he said no. I couldn’t blame him - who wants to talk on the telephone when you’re busy? So, I started talking to the journalist, and recommended that he explore the mesa west of Belen, NM, because it had just been rechristened with a Danish name, and you never know what you might find way out in the desert.

A Saturday Evening at Sky Zone Sacramento

A Paradise for kids and teens.  Getting a bit rowdy on a Saturday evening, though. 12-year-old Queen Bees and their cliques ruling the roost.  Kids disappearing high above, and reappearing.  Hyperactive kids and wannabe gymnasts.

Profit

According to Jasper, the entire point of taking long walks is to harass small animals. Last night, I had to restrain him when we returned to the back gate, and found a skunk had taken advantage of Jasper’s temporary absence to poke around for food. 

This morning, Jasper pursued a small animal underneath a hedge. Looking at the shrubbery, I discovered a twenty-dollar bill squirreled in the foliage, which I pocketed. 

We profit from walks in our own ways.

A Do-Over?

Never went to the prom? Needs a better group of friends? Bored?:

A 29-year-old woman was arrested after police said she posed as a teenager and attended a New Jersey high school, according to local news outlets.

The woman, a resident of New Brunswick, is said to have given a fake birth certificate to the New Brunswick Board of Education “with the intent to enroll as a juvenile high-school student,” according to a Jan. 25 police news release. 

...After gaining admittance, the woman attended New Brunswick High School for four days before anyone noticed something was awry, according to 6ABC News.

If It Walks Like a Russian Stooge

Russian stooges are everywhere these days:

Gabbard, who went on to run for president in 2020, was extremely conspicuous for repeating Vladimir Putin’s talking points accusing the opposition to the Assad regime of being jihadists, including in editorials published in her home state Honolulu Star-Advertiser. It was behavior like this that led Hillary Clinton to say in 2019 “I’m not making any predictions, but I think [the Kremlin has] got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians.”

To prove the point, Gabbard repeatedly appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to oppose NATO membership for Ukraine. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard tweeted, “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border.” 

Then there is Matt Taibbi who has extensive experience in Russia, having lived there for most of the 1990s. He has long made excuses for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and separatist activity in the Donbas, including during his stint at Rolling Stone. He’s even made excuses for Russia’s meddling in American elections. And he was insistent that Putin would not launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a position he later acknowledged was a colossal mistake: “My mistake was more like reverse chauvinism, being so fixated on Western misbehavior that I didn’t bother to take this possibility seriously enough.” He quickly pivoted to doing podcasts with Katie Halper (of “Joe Biden is a rapist” fame) with titles like “How the US Caused the Ukraine Crisis.”

Pretty Pictures by Mars Probes

We live in wonderful times.

Just a Normal, Ordinary Guy

An underground shelter for each of his kids?:

The man who was discovered living in an Austrian cellar with his six British-born children is a "Doomsday prepper" who previously worked in IT in London, according to local officials.

Tom Landon, 54, is reported to be a conspiracy theorist who wrote several self-published books denouncing Austria's government.

He is believed to have been living in a network of cellars underneath a building guarded by security cameras in the small village of Orbitz, near the Czech border, for around nine months.

...Locals say they knew of Landon, who had been trying to buy cellars in the village for a while, and had been concerned by his erratic behaviour.

...He had bought up to five cellars in the village, according to Greil, apparently wanting one for each of his six children.

Books published in his name online include Dirty Justice, The Judas Principle and The Destructive Effect of Information Technology on Human Intellectual Development.

According to media reports he has also written a musical about the Austrian rock star Falco – known for his 1985 hit Rock Me Amadeus – who died in a car crash in the Dominican Republic in 1998. Landon, who was living on the island at the time, claims to have found the body and that there was a cover-up about the true cause of death.

On Being Hunted by Solomon Peña

Disturbing article about failed Republican candidate Solomon Peña (who has still be denounced by the Republican party despite today's indictment) and his shooting spree in Albuquerque:

Q.: One of the strange things to me is that right after he was allegedly involved with the shooting at your home, Solomon Peña was elected to a leadership position in the county Republican Party—a county ward chairman. 

A: Yeah. Our county is broken up into wards. And in the particular ward for the Republican Party, he was elected, which is so ludicrous. I am hoping that the Republican Party of Bernalillo County will remove him at this point in time. But the response from the Republican Party for the state—it’s interesting. They’re waiting until he’s proven guilty. The decision that was made by the judge in district court is that he’s going to stay in jail until the trial begins, which I’m grateful for. But, this should be an automatic removal as ward chair. So TBD. Let’s see what they really are going to do.

Heavy Rain in New Zealand's North

They are really getting slammed in Auckland and northern parts of the North Island!

 

LAPD Bans Thin Blue Line Flag in Public Areas

Surprising but welcome news!:

Along with banning the flag from station lobbies, Moore said his order includes patches on uniforms and bumper stickers on police vehicles. Violators could face discipline, a department spokeswoman said Thursday.

In a departmentwide email, Moore said the flag’s original meaning of support for police had been overshadowed when it began appearing at rallies for the Proud Boys and other far-right extremist groups.

“It’s unfortunate that extremist groups have hijacked the use of the ‘Thin Blue Line Flag’ to symbolize their undemocratic, racist, and bigoted views. Flags serve as powerful symbols with specific meanings,” he wrote, adding that officers would still be allowed to display the flag in their personal work spaces, lockers and personal vehicles.

Moore’s decision went viral in right-wing media circles as critics lambasted him for what they called his kowtowing to progressive ideals. During one of her regular appearances on Fox News, former reality star and Olympic decathlete Caitlyn Jenner accused Moore of “going woke on us big time” and predicted that the move would deal a blow to officer morale.

...Former LAPD Sgt. Jody Stiger, who once was president of the association that represents the department’s Black cops, said that he texted Moore to say he agreed with the decision.

“The reason being not because I think it’s racist, but the racists have hijacked it. It’s been around for decades, and our meaning of it is to honor those who have fallen in the line of duty,” said Stiger, who retired from the department last year to take a position as director of community safety for the University of California system. “That’s where it came from, and that’s where it always represented for most law enforcement officers.” 

While at the LAPD, he said he spoke up whenever he saw Trump memorabilia hanging around a police station. Such expressions were inappropriate in such a divided climate and may have violated a department ban on political activity while on duty, he said. His concerns, he added, were not politically motivated. “I don’t care if it’s a Biden flag,” he said.

Just When Jasper and I Think We’re All Alone….

When in Rome....

Oh, it’s been like forever since I did this! 

My first circuit around the floor was disagreeable; clinging to the wall the entire way. So, I had to practice. They had these little PVC walkers with wheels (like in the picture) - meant for kids. I didn’t realize the walkers were rentals. So, I found an unattended one, borrowed it, and took it around the floor. 

Then I noticed several girls, age about seven, were using the carpeted area outside the skating floor as a practice area. More friction there; less formidable. So, I joined them, plodding around, and taking pains not to get in their way. 

And so my last circuit around the floor was - better. Like they say, when in Rome, ….

Getting Annoyed at Google's Prudish Censorship of My Blog

Lately, I notice that Google administrators based in Muslim countries are systematically going through the 20,000+ posts on my blog and are removing posts that seem to offend them. Three such posts include: 

• A drive along the Las Vegas Strip, featuring pictures of the many large casinos there; 
• A reminiscence of driving through central Nevada and seeing signs for brothels; 
• A puzzling case where a tourist in Las Vegas fell into prostitution for insufficient reasons. 

Now, I can see how references to prostitution and gambling, or just references to Nevada, in general, might offend some people. Still, these examples are exceedingly mild compared to what is possible out there. 

I even notice Google administrators have been pondering a joke I made about Flat-Earthers. (No censorship there yet, thank goodness, but exactly where the line is there is unclear to me.)

Anyway, the content of my blog is my business.  If I want to make jokes about Flat-Earthers, or notice something seamy in Nevada, it's my business.  No one is making you read it.  So, just buzz off already!

Folsom Lake Levels

Rising smartly!

Solomon Peña is Quite The Republican Weirdo

Solomon Peña's wired in to other New Mexican weirdos:

Toulouse-Oliver, the secretary of state, was a target of Pena’s rage. On Twitter, the failed candidate blamed her for helping ensure the 2020 election was “rigged against Trump” and vowed to “personally volunteer my time to escort her handcuffed body to Guantanamo Bay Cuba.” In a statement to TPM, Toulouse-Oliver described Pena’s alleged crimes as the byproduct of election conspiracy theories. 

“The recent violence we’ve seen here in New Mexico against elected officials is the sad but predictable outcome of dangerous rhetoric and conspiracy theories, largely centered around false claims about our elections and election administrators,” Toulouse-Oliver said. “This drumbeat of lies and dangerous rhetoric aren’t just throwaway comments on social media. It can have real and frightening impacts on our daily lives as the recent shootings show. There simply is no place for it in our communities and democratic society.”

I looks like drug money fueled Peña's political campaign:

“APD detectives learned through witness interviews related to the shooting investigation that Peña identified individuals to funnel contributions from an unknown source to his legislative campaign,” said APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos in an official statement. “Detectives are working with other law enforcement agencies to determine whether the money for the campaign contributions was generated from narcotics trafficking, and whether campaign laws were violated.”

Celebration of Life for Historian Robert M. Utley

A charmed life.

 

A Very Albuquerque Doordash Story

I recognize the Burqueño paranoia. This is something I could see some of my relatives doing:

Court documents say Nicki Osborne was trying to confirm a delivery address when a female emerged from a house armed with a gun and yelled at Osborne to leave the area.

When Osborne tried to leave, a second female and a male emerged from the residence armed with guns and fired shots. Osborne was unharmed in the incident. 

When police arrived on the scene, the suspects barricaded themselves inside the residence and initiated a lengthy standoff before they eventually surrendered.

Thinking of Arkstorm Again

Marguerite was musing:

I’ve been thinking about the “mega flood” of 1862. And the evidence of earlier mega flooding incidents in California history. In no way are we prepared for this kind of massive, catastrophic scenario, and I don’t know that we will be by the time it happens again. Lengthy article, but well worth reading:

What they found was stunning. The Great Flood of 1862 was no one-off black-swan event. Summarizing the science, Ingram and USGS researcher Michael Dettinger deliver the dire news: A flood comparable to—and sometimes much more intense than—the 1861–1862 catastrophe occurred sometime between 1235–1360, 1395–1410, 1555–1615, 1750–1770, and 1810–1820; “that is, one megaflood every 100 to 200 years.” They also discovered that the 1862 flood didn’t appear in the sediment record in some sites that showed evidence of multiple massive events—suggesting that it was actually smaller than many of the floods that have inundated California over the centuries.

This map from the report doesn't give me confidence.  The bottom of my basement is 23 feet and 8 inches above sea level.  Which I think isn't nearly high enough....

Approaching a Break

It's raining hard tonight, but we are getting close to a break. The rains will ease Monday night, and there's a chance of showers on Thursday, but after that, likely no more rain for the rest of the month. 

Still, tonight, areas in the Sierras southeast of Sacramento will get hit hard (Valley Springs, Angels Camp, Sonora, Mariposa). Hoping the best for them. 

The rain monitor broke at Sacramento Executive Airport on Jan. 9th (the rainiest day so far), so it's necessary to substitute values for the 9th and 10th to get statistics. Still, Sac Exec is about 179% of average for the date, and the Sacramento City monitor near El Camino & Watt is 197% of average. It sounds like a lot, but we've had more rain even in the recent past (January and February 2017, just six years ago, saw more rain). Some local places are approaching flood (worried by North Natomas), but I'm hoping we'll avoid calamity in Sacramento. 

At first, the rains were light in the northernmost regions of the state, but lately they've received more. Indeed, the only places in California not to have been hammered are in the Mojave Desert.

Dance Workshop with Stacy "Jukeboxx" Letrice - Step One - January 14, 2023

A fun afternoon learning from Stacy "Jukeboxx" Letrice.  The Saturday half of the workshop was described as follows:

The 90 min Afro-Dancehall Fusion class integrates traditional West African movement, Jamaican dancehall, and African pop culture dance styles, creating a colorful montage of dances of the Diaspora. Participants will learn steps and techniques from African and Caribbean dance forms. Then, participants will apply those very movements to exciting and lively choreography. In addition, participants will gain the understanding of the fundamental similarities and differences between the various cultural styles while exploring individuality, confidence, body awareness, and performance. All levels welcomed.

Here's one of the practice exercises:

 

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Here's the music played for the main dance:

 

Tony Ashby's Obituary

Courtesy of Linda and Kate. One really nice guy:

GSPD & DEAD BLONDE – У России три пути

I heard this as exit music from the recent show I saw:

 

California Drought Eases Slightly

Before the last person in California washes into the ocean from all the rain, climate watchers finally concede that the state's drought has eased somewhat.

David Zaintz, The Painter

I don't know David Zaintz, but I do know (my high school classmate and what is very likely his brother) Steve Zaintz. About ten years ago, Steve kindly hosted my family one afternoon at one of his Thai restaurants.

Last year, my friend Ira tried to get in touch with Steve to let him know he was dying, but Steve apparently was quite ill himself, and couldn't be reached. 

At least David paints:

“In the Direction of Albuquerque,” David Zaintz, acrylic. (Courtesy of Sumner & Dene Gallery)

"Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812" - Shotgun Players, Berkeley, CA - January 6, 2023

This time, I got to see the show.

"Letters"

 

"Oh, The Humanity!"

Was Ricky Romero a Stage Name?

As a 60s kid in Albuquerque, I took great delight in watching Mike London's wrestling show on late-Saturday-morning TV. In particular, I liked watching my hero, Ricky Romero. 

Recently, watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the 1936 motion picture "Swing Time," I learned that Astaire's romantic rival for Roger's affections in the movie is given the name Ricky Romero. Now I'm wondering if the wrestler adopted Ricky Romero as a stage name. Does anyone know?

[A contributor to the "Albuquerque Memories" Facebook Group points me to the Ricky Romero Wikipedia page.  He was born Henry Romero, and had several ring names, but there is nothing at the page about why he called himself Ricky.]

The Rain Keeps Falling in California

The rain keeps falling in California. Not everywhere, of course, but particularly in a belt from about Monterey Bay to Fallon, NV. Forecasts for the next 2.5 weeks show no important changes. More rain will fall. Maybe expand that wet area. Currently at Sacramento Executive Airport, rainfall is 158% of average for the date.

All But Gone

Gone, gone 

Gone with the hogshead cask and demijohn 

Gone with the sugar barrel pickle barrel, milk pan 

Gone with the tub and the pail and the tierce

Happy New Year!

"You Have To Marginalize These Figures"

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