Tomorrow is October 1, the informal start of Socal’s most infernal fire season – about six weeks of Oct and Nov. And at the moment I’m sitting at my desk, watching three aircraft drop bright orange fire retardant on a big brush fire about three miles away, in Bonsall. It’s unsettling.
Firefighters here have gotten good, and respond rapidly. But no system is perfect and we all wait in fear of The Next Big One. This isn’t it, the weather conditions are fairly mild. But still…
Kilauea begins to erupt a mere 119 days after we were there. Bad luck; timing is everything.
Whoa. This seems like pretty big news.
Creating an effective, long-lived hemo-filter and bioreactor in an implantable unit is amazing. Living via dialysis is a tough road – our friend Jim Moore suffered through it for years. With this device he could have had a much better quality of life. Good for UCSF and…science!
And this explains a lot. Russian bad actors have determined that deeply religious people are susceptible to believing things without supporting facts, a special kind of religious confirmation bias. So they feed them a Facebook diet of disinformation intended to create divisions among Americans. Brilliant but evil.
Both of these unrelated stories were found at Hacker News, one of my favorite sources for interesting news unlikely to be covered by mass media. Highly recommended.
Enjoying a classic post-retirement Socal day today. Cool morning, a Zoom meeting with my nonprofit’s CEO, then a round of golf with friends in Rancho Santa Fe.
For the afternoon, drinks on the sunny patio of the RB Inn (picture above) and a dinner meeting with the Board of my for-profit company. All-in, a pretty perfect day.
Every week I get a thought-provoking question from Storyworth, a service my daughter signed me up for. The idea is that my collection of responses will be captured in a book format so that my descendants can have some idea of what I think and who I was. Pretty cool, actually. So I’ve been good about writing weekly essays in response to the questions.
This week’s essay question was “Jeff, what political issues do you consider the most important?”. I’ve spent more than a little time thinking about that, and my answer is republished here.
My goodness, it’s hard to know where to start. We have soooo many political problems here in 2021, it might take a while to discuss them all.
I’ll start with root causes, and first among them is term limits – or lack thereof. We need term limits on Representatives, Senators and Supreme Court Justices. And maybe all judges. Lifetime appointments are just a bad idea. The Supreme Court has become politicized because of the lifetime appointment – it makes the stakes very high for each appointment.
The second root cause is minority rule, which shows up in two places – the Electoral College and the Senate. It’s a complex subject, but in general both Senate seats and Electors are correlated with land area, not population. So fewer people living in vast empty lands can over-rule many more people living in cities. This is/was a flaw in our original governance and should be changed. North Dakota with a population of 762,000 gets the same two powerful Senators as California with a population of 40,000,000. That’s crazy. Each ND Senator has essentially 40 times as much power/constituent as each CA Senator.
Minority rule is also evident in the Electoral College, which again maps electoral votes to land area (states) instead of people. It’s not as bad as the Senate, but it has led to Presidents taking office with the least popular vote, more than once. The EC may have made sense in the 1800s, but no longer.
After the root causes, there are some other secondary effects (problems) worth listing as political issues.
First is Roe v Wade, and a woman’s right to choose what to do with and within her body. That just shouldn’t be a discussion – a person should have complete agency over his/her body. End of discussion – any other choice is a wrongheaded slippery slope.
Second is the misinterpretation of the Second Amendment. What we have in America is not a “well-regulated militia” – it’s wildly too many guns in the hands of often misguided people. We have more guns than citizens in America, for no good reason. Don’t label me “anti-gun-ownership” – I’m all for interested parties getting to own and use a gun if they wish – but gun owners should be registered, trained, occasionally evaluated, and part of a regulated population (a militia). This is one concept the Founders got right but we’ve perverted over the years.
The third notable secondary political issue is our out of control Defense spending. We hotly debate every dollar spent on the welfare of citizens (healthcare, infrastructure, education), but the trillion dollars per year that we spend on weapons and the military just goes through with no comment. We spend 100 times more on Defense than any other nation, for no good reason. I’m in favor of our having the best technology and military strength, but it doesn’t take a trillion dollars per year to achieve that. Maybe half – but there are very few champions of this idea.
I could go on, but this is plenty. Fix these five political issues and we’d have a more perfect Union.
We have some gnarly decisions to make very soon. We’re scheduled to begin a shit-ton of travel next week: a week in KY, then a long weekend in NOLA (just me), then a week in NC, then a week in Cabo. A short hiatus at home for Christmas, then a month in the Southern hemisphere, then another week in Cabo. (We have house-sitters, so I’m not concerned with publishing the fact that we’re traveling.)
The gnarly part of the decision is that COVID stats are way up again, and traveling is questionable. Pre-vaccines, this would have been a no-brainer. We would stay home. But now it’s all hard to quantify risks and probabilities.
The S America trip is the one that concerns me most. (1) It’s hard to really know the state of infectiousness there. (2) Variants. And (3), the thought of getting seriously ill that far from home is frightening. What’s the health care situation at the tip of Argentina? How long will it take to reach good medical care from a ship near Antarctica? These are gnarly questions (I know, I’ve used that word in each of the three paragraphs, but I like it.)
Traveling post-retirement was the reason I started this blog in 2018, and I’ve done a fair amount of travel posting here since then. Along with a smattering of random commentary and musings about the world. So the next 3-4 months should be a cornucopia of travel stories and pictures. Unless it becomes a cautionary tale about travel during a pandemic.
It’s Ryder Cup weekend! The golf event that’s perfectly designed for TV, played this year at Whistling Straights in Wisconsin. Great to see.
Our mini heat wave is over. Two prior days above 100 degrees, but today it’s CA cool. I plan to take advantage of the nice weather and get outside for some long walks. That’ll help offset the golf-watching lazies.
Lots of press lately on Trump’s hold on the GOP and the preparation he and his henchmen are making for the 2024 election. I have to admit, I haven’t given Trump much chance of running again in 2024 due to age and health, but…stranger things have happened. I don’t think our country would survive another four years of Trump’s assault on democracy from the Presidential seat. So until that election gets a lot closer I’ll hold on to my belief that he’ll have to opt out.
This is very cool. There are a lot more undersea communication cables than I thought. We’ve wired the world.
Mother Jones is running a series on Bad Bosses. There are some good stories in there, but I have some Bad Boss stories that are very competitive. For example:
Uggh. Just remembering those guys puts me in a foul mood. Back to golf…
Another super-hot day is expected in Socal today, with temps here above 100. I can’t wait.
I have to do a mea culpa on recent weather posts. The heat index numbers I’m getting from my weather source just don’t seem right. I did some research, and it looks like the relative humidity measurement of my source is stuck at 100%. This is a problem, because heat index is calculated based on temperature and relative humidity (or dew point). From Wikipedia:
So it’s a little complicated, but if relative humidity measurements are wrong, then the heat index is wrong. Oops.
I started wondering why I was getting such extreme numbers when I was sure the humidity wasn’t extreme. Now I know. I’ve gone back and edited the most recent posts based on this new information. Always happy to learn something and correct myself.
*With apologies to Andy Williams (singer), Edward Pola and George Wyle (songwriters).
Aaaaand the Santa Ana winds arrive in Socal. It’s 11am and 98 degrees F, with the hot air flow from the desert (from the east) cancelling out any ocean air flow from the west. Our heat index is 179! This is worst case fire weather. Too hot to do anything outdoors.
Forecasters say this will only last two days, but in my experience once these things grab the local weather pattern, they don’t let go easily. Stay tuned.
Update at 1130am. 99 degrees with a heat index of 190! See the National Weather Service table for heat indices below. 190 is a very dangerous situation for anyone who has to work outdoors (actually, if it were true, it would be a world record).
Update # 2: It’s now 1pm, 102 degrees with a heat index of 207. I think I’ll go dig a ditch.
More seriously, it’s a perfect day to read and write indoors with AC. So that’s my gig. Heat strokes aren’t fun.
Kind of a weird start to the week.
Aside from all that, I read K’s latest book yesterday. It was really good. YA isn’t my normal genre, but her book reads well, is interesting and has a nice plot. Anyone (everyone) in the market for a fun read should buy it: Puck’s Fairy Glen. Congrats to my talented wife!
We’re in the final days of summer for north America – the autumnal equinox happens in just a few days (Sep 22). It was a fairly mild summer in Socal, but a hot humid one in KY.
Now comes the Fall, in which the weather across our two homes begins to diverge radically. October and even November can be brutally hot in Socal, with frequent hot Santa Ana winds creating the worst fire hazards of the year. Our all-time worst fires, in 2003 and 2007, were in October. At the same time, KY weather cools down, the leaves begin to turn and the best weather of the year ensues. Go figure.
The grandsons are visiting the Monsma clan in Michigan this week, and one of the pictures from there is just too good to not share. Happy kids!
We’ll be in KY to see them soon. And to sample the (hopefully) great Fall weather.
Here’s another CA-KY comparison. USAToday has ranked cities and states by driver rudeness, and here are some results:
Not surprising that CA has 3/5 worst spots, measured by driving citations per thousand – people drive madly here. I’m pleasantly surprised that KY gets 2/5 top spots for least rude driving. And that the worst (rudest) driving populations generate sixty times more citations than the least rude.
Of course it could just be the amount of policing done in each geography. Statistics and the assumptions behind them are complicated….
Finally, in some nice news for the day, SpaceX’s all-civilian crew returned to Earth after a few days orbiting. They got to live a dream of mine, so good for them. Maybe at some point SpaceX will decide to take a geriatric, overweight, opinionated Caucasian Baby Boomer to orbit. Yeah, right. But I can still dream.
We’re in the market for a car for the KY home. Our choices are:
Dedicating a car to just sit around for about half of its life seems an extreme solution, but the economics are clear. I’ve run the numbers several times, and leasing a new car wins by a long way. It all starts with the new normal for car rentals. In years past $50 per day was a good estimate for car rental cost. Now, after COVID’s impact, it’s about $110 per day. If you’re going to be somewhere even one week per month, that’s $770 per month as the break-even point. Turns out that there are a LOT of leases below that threshold.
Leasing has 2-3 other factors going for it:
So with all that in mind, what car and what terms? This is what I’ve been communicating to dealers (a somewhat painful process):
Two things have been surprising. One, the difficulty in dealers/sales people understanding that clear (I think) set of terms. And two, the extreme lack of inventory – COVID has killed the supply chain for many vehicles.
After factoring ALL this in, the vehicle that is my most likely target is a Hyundai Tucson. It’s one of those bland small SUVs that probably doesn’t do anything superbly, but does everything well enough. And Hyundai seems to have the least supply chain problems and excellent lease programs. Their hybrid version gets 38 mpg (!), a seriously good feature.
Tonight’s SpaceX launch was inspirational. Musk can be a real tool, but wow, is he ever doing a great job taking us back into space. Every aspect of the launch was an engineering marvel, made increasingly common by his companies.
I sure hope I’m still around and able to take advantage of airline-like seats on a future SpaceX launch. Time is against me, but…today sure looked like fun. Right now three mostly-normal people and a billionaire are orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes at altitudes not reached since the Apollo program. Next stop, the Moon.
Today is Recall Day in California. Today we find out if Gov Newsom remains in office, and/or if I get more than two votes. Exciting!
Today is also trash pickup day and pool cleaning day. Both equally exciting.
My first impressions of the Apple Watch, after one day using it, are generally good. I *am* surprised by the level of dependency on / interaction with the watch and my iPhone. To me that seems both a strength and a weakness, compared to other standalone smart watches. Learning what functions are done on the iPhone and what functions are done on the watch, and how to do them, isn’t simple. It’ll take me a while to become expert at it.
In other technology news, a friend of mine has contacted me to participate in a new project involving OneWeb’s LEO (low earth orbit) broadband-delivering satellites and a new electronically steered phased array receiver. It sounds interesting, and the applications are compelling. Add to that another quantum encryption project and it looks like my 2022 consulting opportunities will be good. It’s nice to have a tight labor market so that no one blinks an eye at having a “seasoned” engineer work on their projects – they’re happy to find anyone.
In other other technology news, Apple has some big product announcements today. Given that I bought the series 6 watch just yesterday, I’m fully expecting the series 7 to make mine undesirable and obsolete.
Finally, this is a spectacularly bad idea. Didn’t anyone watch the movie?
As part of my campaign to improve health, today I received a new Apple Watch series 6. It was super easy to set up, and I’m still exploring all the functions (Complications, as Apple weirdly calls them). I think I’ll be happy with it.
Apple’s packaging on the watch was waaaaay over the top. I get it, it’s Apple style, but so much fancy packaging to just throw away. I would appreciate it if they were a bit more recycle-conscious. I’ll throw all the packaging into the recycle bin, but I have my doubts.
And I definitely know I’m over whatever illness that was last week, as I’ve put in a pretty full day of online work. Still feel sharp.
Bill Maher’s Real Time show this weekend was good, and featured, among others, the brilliant George Will. I’ve always been a fan of Will, even though his politics are a bit right of mine. What I appreciate is his intellect and his objectivity. When he has an opinion, he can explain it in perfect logic – something I aspire to. And on this show, from vaccinations to wokeness to economics, I tended to agree with Will.
But the thing that really struck me about the show was the “New Rules” segment, which concluded with a diatribe about the two Americas. Not the division in politics, but the division in water. Maher showed a graphic of the continental US, in which the left half of the country is a parched wasteland and the right half a flooded mess. A bit overstated, but basically true.
It struck me how much that graphic looks exactly like a picture of the Big Island of HI. The western half of the island is very dry and the eastern half is very wet. And that’s increasingly what our evolving climate is doing to the United States – the 70 million-ish people west of the Rockies are living in an area with less and less rainfall, no sustainable access to drinking water, aquifers and reservoirs drying up, and the 260 million-ish people east of the Rockies are drowning.
Thinking like an engineer (here’s a problem, what’s the solution?), are we going to move 70 million people to the water or are we going to move water to the people? Maher maintains that moving water from the east to the west is entirely feasible, a no-brainer given that we move oil thousands of miles in pipelines.
But is it? The first thing that I thought of is scale – that’s a LOT of water we’re talking about. Ignoring agriculture and industry, we would need about 100 gallons of water per person per day. That’s 7 billion gallons piped in every day.
And we shouldn’t ignore agriculture, because agriculture is 80% of total water use in California. If 7 billion gallons = 20%, then the total need is 35 billion gallons per day. Let’s round that up to 40 billion gallons to account for the non-CA agricultural needs.
Now…is that feasible? Doing some rough math, it turns out that the CO river, one of CA’s main water sources today, provides about 14 billion gallons of water per day to the west. So we would need about three more CO river-sized new sources of water from the east to the west. And because we have to traverse mountains (notably the Rockies), the water will need to be pumped (gravity is not our friend here) and very likely contained in pipes (to facilitate pumping under pressure).
These will be some big-ass pipes and the power needed to pump the water is…gigantic. Using this as my conversion / equation source, the power needed to pump 25 billion gallons over the Rockies (through passes averaging about 6,000 feet) is about 700 GWh, assuming 70% efficiency in the overall pumping system.
The largest solar farms on Earth today generate about 2 GW of energy continuously and require about 50 square kilometers, so we would need 350 of these to power our new water source. That’s 17,500 sq. km of new solar farms, about the size of the state of New Jersey (excluding water).
That’s actually smaller than I would have thought, and PV efficiency keeps increasing, so that might not be a limiting factor. There’s a LOT of empty land west of the Rockies.
The size and number of pipes needed for the new water source are also a scale problem. A hypothetical 10-foot diameter water pipe can transport about 90,000 gallons of water per minute or 130 million gallons per day, and our daily need for 25B gallons (in addition to the existing CO river) means we would need 192 of our hypothetical 10-foot diameter pipes. That’s 192 new very large pipelines running from the wet eastern US to the dry western US. I suppose it’s doable, but it’s a bigger project than anything we’ve ever done (384K miles of pipeline), including the entire interstate highway system (47K miles of highway). Sounds pretty expensive.
Using this as a rough estimator, the cost of our 192 hypothetical 10-foot diameter pipelines, running 2000 miles each, would be $4 trillion – a big number, but not really a limiting factor. We’re talking about spending that kind of money in today’s US budgets.
The point of all this is to try to decide if Maher’s assertion that building pipelines to supply water to the west is actually feasible. My conclusion is that yes, it is. Even if my estimates are off by a factor of 2 (100%), it’s doable.
But that doesn’t mean that we should dive in and start building. First we’d want to do a few other things and attack the demand side of the equation, like:
After working through this, I’m encouraged. We can make the western US a great place to live again if we invest in some VERY large engineering / terraforming projects. That’s certainly a better use of tax dollars than the Forever War. And the projects sound like fun.
One of my favorite science fiction authors and futurists, Charles Stross, makes a bold prediction I completely agree with. I need to be around to see all this come to fruition.
The media – TV, radio, online and print – will be full of 9-11 memorials today. Rightly so, but in my opinion most of them will miss the point. 9-11 was a national tragedy and a so-far rare attack on American soil. People died, and others died trying to save them. Many heroic stories stem from that day. But the day itself and its casualties aren’t the big story.
9-11 was a clear, unambiguous turning point in American history. In one day we changed from a confident nation with a mostly-clean conscience to, 20 years later, a fearful, angry, vengeful nation with a two-decade record of killing and torture in the Middle East and a gigantic redistribution of power to military and intelligence agencies. Fear has driven our foreign policy since 9-11 and it shows. You can draw a straight line between 9-11 and the election of Trump, our own wannabe-dictator who feasted on the buildup of fear and hate.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have targeted Bin Laden and sought revenge for the attack – we did, and that was justified. But we allowed our fear to change our national psyche and have become a nation that’s hard to recognize. Polarized, fearful of foreigners, fractured national identity, blurring of church and state – these are all outcomes of the smackdown we experienced twenty years ago.
My hope on this anniversary of 9-11 is that we stop operating based on fear and hate and (re)start operating on the principle that we are one nation that can do great things if we work together. Our political opposites aren’t our enemies, they’re our neighbors with whom we have to find a way to make progress. There’s a lot of work to do at home to improve American lives and democracy, and the sooner we get on with that the better.
(Post title is a quote from Dune, by the late great Frank Herbert. Truer words never spoken.)
This is Day 5 of being unwell. After 18 months of COVID-driven isolation, I’ve ventured back out into the world taking full advantage (maybe too full) of being vaccinated. During those 18 months I (and most of you) didn’t have to worry about catching colds from random people – we saw each other under rather controlled circumstances, which has made colds and flus quite rare during the pandemic. Silver lining, I guess.
But here on Day 5 of unwellness, I am reminded that colds and flus are one inevitable outcome of getting back in contact with others, particularly if “others” includes children, who are basically little disease distilleries. They catch contagious diseases easily (no lifetime exposure to most bugs), and they fight them off relatively easily (young, strong immune systems). And they share their malady easily. I’m on a different part of the curve.
So my cold this week is a strong reminder that COVID isn’t the only thing out there that can knock you off your feet. Granted, most flus and colds won’t kill you, but they can rob you of a week or two of your normal enjoyable life. And here in my later / latter years, each week or two is pretty important.
And so it occurs to me that my chosen lifestyle – shuttling back and forth between two homes, and traveling the world in between, requires a certain robustness that isn’t easy to maintain at my age. I’ve never worried about having the stamina to live however I define as “normal”, but at this moment I am. Worried. About that.
It’s just one more reason to take heed to what the Universe has been trying to tell me for quite some time – get into shape! Much, much easier said than done, but if I want to live the life that I have in mind, I’m going to need my health. Actually, I’m going to need to be as healthy as I was mid-40s, when the Great Slide began.
There’s no end of people who will tell you in no uncertain terms how to lose weight and get/stay healthy. And they’re all over the place in terms of strategy. So deciding who to listen to is a challenge. More to come…
First Christmas present of the year received – The Matrix Resurrections debuts December 22nd. It’s shaping up to be a great Q4 for movies. The trailer looks very, very good.
Almost simultaneously, a new movie in one of my favorite genres (end of the world, comet on the way, how do we react?) will be released on Christmas Eve. Titled Don’t Look Up, it has a cast of…well, pretty much everybody: Leonardo DiCaprio (!), Jennifer Lawrence (!), Timothée Chalamet, Rob Morgan, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep (!), Gina Gershon, Cate Blanchett (!), Ron Perlman, Melanie Lynskey, Mark Rylance, Ariana Grande (?), Tyler Perry, Michael Chicklis, and Kid Cudi. I can’t imagine how they got that entire group to sign on – shoujld be interesting.
I suppose it was inevitable, with all the traveling and visiting done last week. I was around a lot of people including a few sick people, and I’ve come down with something since returning. Classic cold symptoms, but I’ll get a C19 test just in case. Sitting, reading and writing are all within my capability at the moment, but anything else and I’m wiped out.
After buying and assembling three of them, I’m a big fan of Zinus beds and bedframes. We now have two in the new KY house and one in CA. Great value, comfortable and convenient. I’ve always *hated* the shopping process and the price of traditional mattresses and stores, and Zinus disappears both those problems. Online shopping rules!
I’ve arrived back in Socal just in time for a heat wave – gonna be mid-90s the next few days. Good time to hunker down with my cold and stay inside.
Another McSweeney’s classic: A SHORT QUIZ FOR MY STUDENTS IN LIEU OF ASKING ABOUT THEIR VACCINE STATUS OR REQUESTING THAT THEY WEAR MASKS.
On one of my Southwest flights yesterday, I sat among a large group of 40-something guys who were traveling to a golf outing. They were boisterous (that’s fine), but they also pretty much ignored the mask requirements during the flight (not fine). I was surprised that the SW flight attendants said absolutely nothing to them.
It’s Wednesday, a travel day. Today I fly back to Socal after a few days in KY. Got to spend time with my Dad, the kids/grandkids, and honored an old friend who died too young. Got to see Hudson on his first day of school (picture above).
And it’s raining today, a nice steady rain with a few claps of thunder. That’s one of the things I love most about KY – the water. It rains a lot, there are lakes and streams everywhere. It’s a plant paradise – everything grows here with abandon, fueled by the warmth and abundant rain. The groundwater is soft, filtered by limestone. Your skin feels great after a shower in soft KY water.
The water situation in Socal is exactly the opposite. It’s a desert; almost never rains. The groundwater is hard, full of salts and minerals. And other than a few native species, plants struggle to live on a miserly 5-6 inches of rain per year.
There are a lot of great things in Socal – sunny weather, mostly temperate along the coast, the Pacific coast itself and lots of inland rugged topography. And when watered, things grow well there too. But water is becoming the weakest link in Socal life. Not enough water for agriculture, not enough water for drinking in some areas, and lack of rain drives the relentless wildfires. Streams have dried up, and aquifers are disappearing. Man-made reservoirs drying up must faster than they can be replenished.
In a nutshell, KY is rich beyond belief with water, and Socal is bankrupt. That makes it strange going back and forth, from one extreme to another. I grew up with no understanding of dry climates; I childishly assumed everywhere was kind of like KY. But after traveling the world, I can recognize that KY is almost uniquely abundant with wildlife and water, four distinct seasons. There’s a reason that the native Americans (the Indians, from my original education) considered KY a sacred hunting ground, to be shared and not claimed.
The infernally stupid California governor’s recall election comes to a close later this week, hopefully with the current Governor allowed to stay in office with just a little less money to spend (it’ll cost about $276M to hold the election.) That’s $276M that we won’t get to spend on roads, healthcare, education, clean water, etc.
The law that allows these recalls to happen need to change. Current law allows 12% of voters (by collected signature) to demand that 100% of us pay for a recall. Newsom received 62% of the votes during the last official election, so it’s not like the election was even close. But in what is now true American democratic style, the minority (12%) rules over the majority (62%). It’s insane and a tragic waste of time and money.
On a lighter note the recall ballot asks two questions. First, should we recall the current Governor? And second, if the Governor *is* recalled (with a majority voting Yes), then who does your vote go to?
There’s a long list of politicians, celebrities, gadflies, charlatans, and nut cases who have officially filed to be the next CA Governor. And then there’s a spot for a write-in vote. I am happy to announce that I have received two official votes for CA Governor (my own and my wife’s). That’s one bucket list item I never expected to check off, but…it’s a strange world. So feel free to vote for me just in case, and if I become Gov the first thing I’ll do is change the idiotic recall laws. And move the CA capital to Fallbrook, because I don’t want to live in Sacramento.
Spent the day today reconnecting with some high school friends and in particular, some members of my HS football team. We had a really nice memorial service for Joe Hall, one of our band of brothers, and I hope people say half as many nice things about me post-life as we said about Joe. He *was* special.
I’ve never been to a HS reunion; I’m not really much for that sort of thing. But this was nice. A few of my friends hadn’t changed much at all, and others like me don’t much resemble our youth. So it goes.
Everyone regretted not staying in closer touch with friends after high school, same as me. I suppose that’s universal. But for a day at least, we set those regrets aside and remembered when we were young. It was pretty great.
The Wheel of Time trailer is out! November has a lot to look forward to.
Rosamund Pike as Moraine is superb casting. I hope that the young unknowns cast as Rand, Perry and Mat all live up to expectations.
Amazon Prime once again brings value for the subscription price. One of the best deals around.
Texas is trying hard to show us what a dis-united states of America would look like. Vigilante-ism. No regulations, no laws. Rule by gun and intimidation. In just a few weeks here’s what the crazed TX legislature and Governor have done:
I hope all those Californians who moved to Texas to take advantage of favorable job and housing markets, along with favorable tax rates, are happy with their new vigilante home. When an unlicensed, unhinged nutter tries to enforce his “understanding” of voting laws or school mask requirements and draws down on them, they’ll understand what it really means to be back in the wild, wild west.
This situation is not going to end well.
I love the NPR Tiny Desk <At Home> Concerts. Check out this beautiful kitchen table performance by The Staves.
Even with all the crap going down in the world, you can find inspiring moments like that.
The transition month begins with a lot of memorable news.
It’s that last bit that I’ll elaborate on. Joe Hall died way too early of stage 4 cancer at age 63. Joe was an integral part of our championship 1970s high school football team, one of the players that kept our spirits high. He was funny, lovable, and tough as nails. I remember the time that Joe, playing linebacker, hit another player so hard that he bent his steel faceguard inward, very visibly. We were all shocked – those things just don’t bend. But Joe just carried on.
Joe was an orphan, raised in a group home (maybe the Ramey Home), so his high school buddies were pretty much his family. Joe married his high school sweetheart, Dawn Forrest, and they eventually settled in Florida. We’ll see Dawn this weekend. I spoke with Joe a few times over our adult years, but never visited (big regret there). He became a scratch golfer, which I was envious of. But good for Joe. I think the last time I saw Joe was at the 2003 reunion of the team at the high school, but I’ve combed through my pictures and don’t have any of him. I broke my yearbook out for the first time in years to see a few pictures of Joe. They brought a smile.
I suppose I’m at that age when more and more of the old gang will say goodbye to this life. Joe being one of the first is hard to take, and is a stark reminder that our time here is limited. Too short. But Joe is remembered, and this weekend his teammates and I will show up from all over the country to honor him. RIP, buddy.
