[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]
"San Francisco gets no rain in January for first time in 165 years." [L.A. Times] Excerpt:
In another sign California's persistent drought, downtown San Francisco recorded no measurable rain in January for the first time in 165 years.There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio; every one is man-made.
The National Weather Service also said Santa Cruz recorded no rain in January for the first time since 1893. Normal rainfall for that city in January is more than 6 inches.
For the Bay Area as a whole, last month was the driest January on record, the weather service said.
December brought decent rain to Southern and Northern California, raising hopes for a wet winter. But January turned out to be dry and unusually warm.
Related: "State's drought having pronounced effect on wildlife." [Veronica Rocha, L.A. Times] Excerpt:
Baby squirrels in Northern California are so hungry they are jumping out of their nests to search for food.
Food sources for wildlife have been diminished by California's prolonged drought.
The Gold Country Wildlife Rescue in Loomis, Calif., has been swamped with orphaned squirrels.
"If the drought continues, we expect next year to be much worse. Fewer babies will make it through to adulthood as sources of food become scarce."
River otters are making an incredible comeback. But the story is not over for these playful and social mammals. Pollution and habitat destruction pose a constant threat to their recovery.
The good news for river otters is that the Environmental Protection Agency is incredibly close to completing the Clean Water Protection rule. Finally, the original protections for small wetlands and streams under the Clean Water Act will once again apply to these important waters.
The bad news is that in order to shield our precious waterways from pollution, the Clean Water Protection rule must first survive the new Congress....
You can help sound the alarm for the protection of wetlands and streams.
River otters, great blue herons, ducks, fish, and countless more species simply can’t afford to lose more wetlands and face more pollution in the waters they depend on.
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| Yellow-crowned Night Heron nestlings |
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Face your problems head on. It isn’t your problems that define you, but how you react to them and recover from them. Problems will not disappear unless you take action. Do what you can, when you can, and acknowledge what you’ve done. It’s all about taking baby steps in the right direction, inch by inch. These inches count, they add up to yards and miles in the long run.
On a side note, after my ex-husband and I were divorced, I got to talking one time with the woman he was dating, and she said she wanted to ask me about something. She said, "After he comes out of the bathroom, I find this stack of toilet paper squares on top of the toilet tank. Do you know what that's about?"
For the last two years it has seemed that most of my time has been spent going into hospitals or outpatient surgeries. I recently had another biopsy on my right eyelid. Most painful thing yet. The tiny needle goes into the inside corner of my eyelid.
And I've just moved back in to my own place. All these boxes to unpack, just a lot of little things. My body aches, my hands are in constant pain.
I admit I've been depressed. I recognize that but I can't stop it. I keep thinking about the men in my life, the good ones, and ask myself why am I not with one of them? I've always been afraid to get too close. I had special people, but I didn't make the effort to really connect.
The most vain thing is: I can't accept aging. I don't want to be old!! I look at men my age and it's like I'm a 30-year-old being courted by old men. My mind is young, I can't connect with people my own age.
Also, I absolutely hate cold weather! That, in itself, is depressing. I need a job, to be useful to someone or some people. I was my job, my job was me.
For an Irish TV program ["Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’"]"If Our Founding Fathers Were All Christians, Why Did They Say This?" [Tolerant Libertarian, Daily Kos] Excerpt:
On the short clip, Fry is asked by veteran Irish TV presenter Gay Byrne what he would say to God if he died and had to confront him.He goes further than I would because I don't believe that there is a god and there is no point in going that far. However I do agree with this:
In his imaginary conversation with God, Fry says he would tell him: "How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right."
Yes, the world is very splendid but it also has in it insects whose whole lifecycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes. Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation in which that didn’t exist. It is simply not acceptable.
Nobody can deny the fact that Christianity has played a huge role in our history. From the first Thanksgiving to the ideas of Jesus Christ that are embroidered in our culture today, Christianity and the Bible are responsible for a big part of our heritage.
However, many conservatives will take this fact way out of context. They'll think that you have to be a Christian to be patriotic, which is simply not true. Following the more secular teachings of Jesus Christ (being charitable, loving one another, treating strangers with kindness) is what the men who founded this country were for....
If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution. –George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia (1789)
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr (1787)
Here are some major events that have occurred in the first few weeks of 2015.
"Barrett Brown's sentence is unjust, but it may become the norm for journalists" [Trevor Timm, Boing Boing]
On January 22nd, investigative journalist Barrett Brown was sentenced to an obscene 63 months in prison, in part for sharing a hyperlink to a stolen document that he did not steal, and despite the fact that he was not guilty of a crime for linking to it. The attempt to paint merely linking to information as criminal has serious repercussions and represents a dangerous precedent for the practices of journalists. More troubling for press freedom, however, is the White House’s proposed expansion of the CFAA, which will make it much easier for prosecutors to charge journalists with publishing hacked documents in the future....
"WikiLeaks demands answers after Google hands staff emails to US government" [The Guardian]
WikiLeaks revealed last week that the Justice Department got a warrant for three of their staff members’ Gmail accounts in 2012. WikiLeaks publishes secret information in the public interest just like most of the US’s major newspapers, and as such, these warrants are highly controversial among transparency and First Amendment advocates and should be condemned by all journalists. Google later revealed they commendably tried to wage a legal battle against gag orders in the investigation, but claimed they were barred from alerting WikiLeaks earlier.
So we know a thing or two about the surveillance state.
Now, in time for The Nation's 150th anniversary, we've assembled a number of our best articles on the subject in Surveillance Nation, a fascinating and timeless alternative history on the rise of the surveillance state. As our legal affairs correspondent, David Cole, writes in his introduction: "Time and again, writers for The Nation identified threats to privacy and liberty long before they were acknowledged by the broader public and media."
I'm supposed to respect my elders, but now it’s getting harder and harder for me to find one.
In a January 30 article, the NY Times mentions the abolition of slavery on the 31st of January, 1865, but hides it in a discussion of abolitionism: "Was Abolitionism a Failure?" [Jon Grinspan] Excerpt:
But before abolitionism succeeded, it failed. As a pre-Civil War movement, it was a flop. Antislavery congressmen were able to push through their amendment because of the absence of the pro-slavery South, and the complicated politics of the Civil War. Abolitionism’s surprise victory has misled generations about how change gets made.John Cleese on stupidity:
Today, diverse movements cast themselves as modern versions of the struggle against slavery. The former Republican senator Jim DeMint, now the president of the Heritage Foundation, claimed that small-government “constitutional conservatism” has inherited the cause; the liberal TV host Chris Hayes, writing in The Nation, said battling climate change was the “new abolitionism.” That term has become shorthand for “fighting the good fight.” But the long struggle against slavery shows how jerky, contingent and downright lucky winning that good fight was.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a mechanic.
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| Damien Molony & Olivia Vinall in Hard Problem |
Our first Great Books discussion (now called Great Conversations) this year was a reading from the Epic of Gilgamesh. We talked about the development of insight, even at our ages. I related that I was once again surprised by my own ignorance and naivete in being unaware of this ancient (and insightful) writing. All of this connects with this review about a play dealing with the human quest for certainty and order. Not that we can ever truly divorce ourselves from our past and our peculiar mental/personality structure, yet, once again, I was grateful I had not been afflicted with a mental illness of sufficient severity that would have made it even more difficult to sort out order from the disorder that inhabits the human world.
"Why Judges Tilt to the Right." [Adam Liptak, NY Times] Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — LAWYERS on average are much more liberal than the general population, a new study has found. But judges are more conservative than the average lawyer, to say nothing of the graduates of top law schools.Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
What accounts for the gap? The answer, the study says, is that judicial selection processes are affected by politics.
Judges are, of course, almost without exception lawyers. If judges reflected the pool from which they were selected based on politically neutral grounds like technical skill and temperament, the bench might be expected to tilt left.
But something else is going on....
Albert Einstein:
- The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
- A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
- The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
Expensive road. U.S. Route 550, "The Million Dollar Highway," Colorado:
Though the entire stretch has been called the Million Dollar Highway, it is really the twelve miles (19 km) south of Ouray through the Uncompahgre Gorge to the summit of Red Mountain Pass which gains the highway its name. This stretch through the gorge is challenging and potentially hazardous to drive; it is characterized by steep cliffs, narrow lanes, and a lack of guardrails; the ascent of Red Mountain Pass is marked with a number of hairpin curves used to gain elevation, and again, narrow lanes for traffic — many cut directly into the sides of mountains.
The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq. miles/4,53 sq. km.
Prayers said by children:
- Robert: Dear God, I am an American, what are you?
- Jane: Dear God, Instead of making people die and having to make new ones, why don't you just keep the ones you got now?
- Mickey: Dear God, if you watch in church Sunday I will show you my new shoes.
Limerick of the week:
Tom Twister was "Mister Pessimistic";
his sister was hyster-optimistic.
Apart they went their polar ways,
but when they met on blessèd days,
they could pair to come toward realistic.
| Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean |
I moved to Northern Cali in the late 70s. There had been a 5 year drought at that time. Clear Lake, which is in Lake County was so low the piers were on dry land. There was not a blade of green grass anywhere. I had lived in Washington State for 14 years and was looking for sunshine. Anyway, bought two pieces of land. Because of the drought land was cheap. I also bought a business. At that time there were only 36,000 people in all of the county. The people depended on tourist to make a living and with no water there were no tourist. That winter it begin to rain. Day and night it rained. The lake was over flowing and the hills were bright green. I've seen Cali turn on a dine, hopefully it will again.
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping!
DeleteThanks to all who supplied today's fish! California drought, man-made lakes, river otters and other critters losing wetlands, the world of birds, what defines you, TP conservation, depression, cellular preoccupation, Stephen Fry’s stir, Founding-Fathers controversy, freedom of the press, finding an elder, abolition & abolitionism, John Cleese on stupidity, what makes a mechanic?, our search for certainty, rightward-tilting judges, uninevitable change, Einstein’s idea of “genuine religiosity,” cobweb, million-dollar road, smallest island country, children’s prayers, the half sit-up, realistic possibility….
ReplyDeleteReaders need only compare
ReplyDeleteThis meter to Mo’s wretched fare;
This, a drive on a highway,
His a cobblestone byway
On the back of a broken-down mare.