I am happy to report that three of my grands are home schooling (the traditional way), four will be schooling from home by choice, and the one remaining may or may not be going to school two days per week. (She wants to school all from home, but her mom wants her to try the two days in class approach. Sigh. Her dad says he imagines that all the kids will be 100% from home within two weeks, as he expects an outbreak.)
Most of the smoke is coming from hundreds of miles away. The prevailing winds are from the north or northwest, and push smoke into the San Joaquin Valley (where we are), which is closed at the south end. So smoke and other pollutants are trapped by the mountains and often in the summer by an inversion layer. The smoke seems to be thicker today than yesterday, and the predicted air quality index is higher. I hear that firefighters are coming in from other states and as far away as Australia. Here are maps. [Click]
Status reports on California wildfires, from the Sacramento Bee. [Click] CalFire has thrown almost everything it has at the fires; help arriving from ten other states, money from federal government, governor has reached out to Canada and Australia. There are fires in the mountains both east and west of Fresno— at quite a distance, but closer. One fire was arson, and the arsonist has been caught.
With so many fires caused by lightning, I cannot wrap my mind around someone deliberately setting a fire right now!!! That is really shocking. I'm glad the culprit was caught!
And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. — from “Dover Beach,” by Matthew Arnold (1867)
Whenever I get feeling down, I remember the Tulsa, OK rally that fizzled and that, as planned, DT exited to the song “You can’t always get what you want”! (*And* that the Rolling Stones then sued DT to stop using their song. Ha!)
UPDATE @ 9:12 p.m.: The magnitude 3.4 earthquake that struck southeast of Detroit Beach, Michigan, about 6:55 p.m. may have been felt 20 miles away in Toledo, Ohio, the United States Geological Survey reports.
The depth of the quake was 5.7 miles, according to the USGS.
There are occasional small earthquakes away from plate margins that dissipate tensions caused by movements at the margins. I made a perfunctory search for the earthquake intensity and didn't find it, but suspect it was at most a very mild dish rattler-- just barely perceptible. Maybe intensity II.
The DNC remains a huge disappointment. And Biden will not be Progressive enough. And we haven’t cured cancer or diabetes yet. This is the time in which we live.
So we keep on keeping on, speaking truth to power, encouraging the good and getting out the vote. The coming generation is going to make large changes. I hope we live to see it, but I know my older grandchildren are already way ahead of the DNC.
It is vitally important to encourage people to vote. But I can't bring myself to encourage anyone to vote for Biden since I can't bring myself to vote for him. That being so, I'm terribly afraid enough people will vote for Hawkins or otherwise not for Biden that Trump will win. That's unthinkable. And yet, just as I couldn't vote for Clinton, I can't vote for Biden.
We need a vote exchange to concentrate third party votes in states where there is no question at all that the majority vote will be for Biden, and Dem votes in battleground states. But those could be fouled up by bad actors.
I know what you mean, Alan, but I could never exchange a vote with someone. My vote is MY voice, and I need to exercise that voice and that right.
I'm going to vote for Biden and will not feel as badly about it as I would have voting for HRC. He's a decent person, but he kowtows to others' opinions too much. At least there's only so far afield he will go before he gets a sense of dizziness and heads back to center. That's more than many politicians have going for them. But I sure wish he were more Progressive.
Our Revolution is having some online meetings about the Progressive plan. Anybody planning to "attend"?
“ Next week - during each night of the RNC - Our Revolution will host a series of organizing calls to mark our 4th anniversary and lay-out our 4 point plan to beat Trump and create a progressive America”
Thanks, Cat; sounds darn good! "Better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it." -- Gene Debs I think I will send Howie a little love, and see if Angela Walker has made a post-DNC or otherwise interesting statement.
I wondered about his accent, and found this in a bio from 2010: [Click] Hawkins is an interesting guy. He was born in San Francisco in 1952, and raised just to the south in San Mateo. He has a distinctive, southern-sounding accent, which, he noted ruefully, prompted “the most frequent question I got from New York City media.” Hawkins says that his accent is native to a particular neighborhood of San Mateo, between the railroad tracks and the Bayshore freeway, which had been settled mostly by people from the South, whites and blacks. The neighborhood was diverse: “Blacks were probably the largest group,” he said. “Then Mexicans, Tongans, Samoans, some Arabs… It was a little United Nations.
OK, I did the deed and now I feel good. Only once before have I voted for someone I didn't want to vote for because someone I had supported asked me to --when Howard Dean asked me to vote for Cruz Bustamante for Governor of California. I still feel DIRTY whenever I think of it. My first Presidential vote was for the re-election of Richard Nixon; I remember thinking that maybe the leopard could change its spots. Well, I was wrong that time and swore I wouldn't make that mistake again. Now I am relieved.
Taegan Goddard (politicalwire.com, behind a paywall) posits an explanation for why presidential approval ratings are nowadays so stable: Facebook. Facebook went live about the time approval ratings stabilized, and it monitizes your likes and dislikes. Show the least interest in political position X, and you will get more X. When you interact with any of those, you will get more and more. The same thing happens with anyone you interact with. Statistics show that the majority of the people in the country get their news through Facebook, so these different tribes live in different realities. (Dare I say on different planets?)
OHIO: As of Saturday afternoon, there have been at least 114,165 confirmed or probable cases in the state, 3,975 deaths, and 12,778 hospitalizations, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
Today we received our first voter information cards (bilingual in English and Spanish):
Date of election
Address at which to verify registration or register (online).
Ballots to be sent out first week of October. (Sample ballots and candidates/ measures information before that—I think about two weeks before, typically, but this card doesn’t say.)
Where to submit ballots: mail (postage pre-paid), drop box (numbers being increased this year, available from four weeks before election day to 8PM election day) or vote center (open four days starting Oct. 31st).
Sign up online to get automatic notifications about your ballot.
Where to apply (online) to work at a vote center.
Where to get more information—e.g. for voters with disabilities, materials in multiple languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Hmong, Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Spanish).
Not bad. Their disabled access system sounds pretty good, at least to someone who doesn’t have any experience with such things:
What Is Remote Accessible Vote By Mail
Voters with disabilities can request and receive access to the Remote Accessible Vote by Mail system. The County of Fresno has selected Democracy Live Secure Select to provide this service. The Remote Accessible Vote by Mail system allows voters with disabilities to download and mark their correct ballot privately and independently using their own assistive technology, print their marked ballot, and mail it to the Elections Office to be counted.
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; "I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work," And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
I am happy to report that three of my grands are home schooling (the traditional way), four will be schooling from home by choice, and the one remaining may or may not be going to school two days per week. (She wants to school all from home, but her mom wants her to try the two days in class approach. Sigh. Her dad says he imagines that all the kids will be 100% from home within two weeks, as he expects an outbreak.)
ReplyDeleteCalifornia Wildfire Tracker ~ interactive map
ReplyDeletehttps://view.ceros.com/abc/abc30-action-news-wildfire-tracker-1/p/1
Alan, it looks like the fire nearest you has been contained. I hope that means your lighter sky underscores that reality.
Most of the smoke is coming from hundreds of miles away. The prevailing winds are from the north or northwest, and push smoke into the San Joaquin Valley (where we are), which is closed at the south end. So smoke and other pollutants are trapped by the mountains and often in the summer by an inversion layer. The smoke seems to be thicker today than yesterday, and the predicted air quality index is higher. I hear that firefighters are coming in from other states and as far away as Australia. Here are maps. [Click]
DeleteThere are so many fires all at once all over California, that it seems overwhelming!
DeleteStatus reports on California wildfires, from the Sacramento Bee. [Click] CalFire has thrown almost everything it has at the fires; help arriving from ten other states, money from federal government, governor has reached out to Canada and Australia. There are fires in the mountains both east and west of Fresno— at quite a distance, but closer. One fire was arson, and the arsonist has been caught.
DeleteWith so many fires caused by lightning, I cannot wrap my mind around someone deliberately setting a fire right now!!! That is really shocking. I'm glad the culprit was caught!
DeleteThis was on Daily Kos
ReplyDeleteAnd we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
— from “Dover Beach,” by Matthew Arnold (1867)
And it perfectly describes how I feel right now.
“ignorant” being the operative word.
DeleteWhenever I get feeling down, I remember the Tulsa, OK rally that fizzled and that, as planned, DT exited to the song “You can’t always get what you want”! (*And* that the Rolling Stones then sued DT to stop using their song. Ha!)
ReplyDeleteBy: WHIO Staff
Updated: August 21, 2020 - 9:12 PM
UPDATE @ 9:12 p.m.: The magnitude 3.4 earthquake that struck southeast of Detroit Beach, Michigan, about 6:55 p.m. may have been felt 20 miles away in Toledo, Ohio, the United States Geological Survey reports.
The depth of the quake was 5.7 miles, according to the USGS.
I noticed that was an odd place for a quake. Any particular reason for it happening then and there?
DeleteThere are occasional small earthquakes away from plate margins that dissipate tensions caused by movements at the margins. I made a perfunctory search for the earthquake intensity and didn't find it, but suspect it was at most a very mild dish rattler-- just barely perceptible. Maybe intensity II.
DeleteHere is the intensity map [Click]
DeleteAnd here is the intensity scale USGS uses. [Click]
Arwa Mahdawi: The DNC handed the mic over to women, but why did they shun the Squad? [Click] It wasn’t the DNC that asked AOC to second Bernie’s nomination, it was Bernie. As for why, allow me to suggest that they don’t know how to be anything other than New Democrats, i.e. borderline Republicans.
ReplyDeleteThe DNC remains a huge disappointment. And Biden will not be Progressive enough. And we haven’t cured cancer or diabetes yet. This is the time in which we live.
DeleteSo we keep on keeping on, speaking truth to power, encouraging the good and getting out the vote. The coming generation is going to make large changes. I hope we live to see it, but I know my older grandchildren are already way ahead of the DNC.
It is vitally important to encourage people to vote. But I can't bring myself to encourage anyone to vote for Biden since I can't bring myself to vote for him. That being so, I'm terribly afraid enough people will vote for Hawkins or otherwise not for Biden that Trump will win. That's unthinkable. And yet, just as I couldn't vote for Clinton, I can't vote for Biden.
DeleteWe need a vote exchange to concentrate third party votes in states where there is no question at all that the majority vote will be for Biden, and Dem votes in battleground states. But those could be fouled up by bad actors.
DeleteI know what you mean, Alan, but I could never exchange a vote with someone. My vote is MY voice, and I need to exercise that voice and that right.
DeleteI'm going to vote for Biden and will not feel as badly about it as I would have voting for HRC. He's a decent person, but he kowtows to others' opinions too much. At least there's only so far afield he will go before he gets a sense of dizziness and heads back to center. That's more than many politicians have going for them. But I sure wish he were more Progressive.
Our Revolution is having some online meetings about the Progressive plan. Anybody planning to "attend"?
Anybody else get this memo?
Delete“ Next week - during each night of the RNC - Our Revolution will host a series of organizing calls to mark our 4th anniversary and lay-out our 4 point plan to beat Trump and create a progressive America”
Here’s the link:
Deletehttps://www.mobilize.us/ourrevolution/event/308629/?force_banner=true&share_context=event_details&share_medium=copy_link
VT: 1553 cases (+12😔)
ReplyDelete58 deaths (17 days)
142 active cases
Recovered:1366 (+8)
In Hospital 4 (+1)
Tests 118,604 (+1606)
TS Laura could intensify to major hurricane status on approach to US Gulf coast
ReplyDeletehttps://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/08/tropical-storm-laura-could-intensify-to-major-hurricane-status-on-approach-to-u-s-gulf-coast/
It occurred to me to check the local visibility reported by the weather service; they say 1.2 miles, which is about what I had figured (1-2 miles).
ReplyDeleteHawkins' response to Biden - Click
ReplyDeleteThanks, Cat; sounds darn good! "Better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it." -- Gene Debs I think I will send Howie a little love, and see if Angela Walker has made a post-DNC or otherwise interesting statement.
DeleteI wondered about his accent, and found this in a bio from 2010: [Click] Hawkins is an interesting guy. He was born in San Francisco in 1952, and raised just to the south in San Mateo. He has a distinctive, southern-sounding accent, which, he noted ruefully, prompted “the most frequent question I got from New York City media.” Hawkins says that his accent is native to a particular neighborhood of San Mateo, between the railroad tracks and the Bayshore freeway, which had been settled mostly by people from the South, whites and blacks. The neighborhood was diverse: “Blacks were probably the largest group,” he said. “Then Mexicans, Tongans, Samoans, some Arabs… It was a little United Nations.
Here’s a Q&A with Howie & Angela from Aug. 4th. [Click]
DeleteOK, I did the deed and now I feel good. Only once before have I voted for someone I didn't want to vote for because someone I had supported asked me to --when Howard Dean asked me to vote for Cruz Bustamante for Governor of California. I still feel DIRTY whenever I think of it. My first Presidential vote was for the re-election of Richard Nixon; I remember thinking that maybe the leopard could change its spots. Well, I was wrong that time and swore I wouldn't make that mistake again. Now I am relieved.
DeleteTaegan Goddard (politicalwire.com, behind a paywall) posits an explanation for why presidential approval ratings are nowadays so stable: Facebook. Facebook went live about the time approval ratings stabilized, and it monitizes your likes and dislikes. Show the least interest in political position X, and you will get more X. When you interact with any of those, you will get more and more. The same thing happens with anyone you interact with. Statistics show that the majority of the people in the country get their news through Facebook, so these different tribes live in different realities. (Dare I say on different planets?)
ReplyDeleteI cannot imagine getting my news from Facebook. If I see skmetjjng of interest there, I usually check BBC and CNN.
DeleteTrump Shows How Little He Cares for His Most Fervent Defenders [Click] “I was a mail carrier in Kentucky. Rural America needs the United States Postal Service, and yet the president’s administration keeps attacking it.”
ReplyDeleteEarth Was a Very Different Place Before Mud [Click] “A great mud boom 400 million years ago changed features such as the shape of rivers and the planet’s biodiversity.”
ReplyDeleteIt just dawned on me that politicians in those days would have had to throw stones instead of mud. [he ducks]
DeleteOHIO: As of Saturday afternoon, there have been at least 114,165 confirmed or probable cases in the state, 3,975 deaths, and 12,778 hospitalizations, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
ReplyDelete3.48%
DeleteToday we received our first voter information cards (bilingual in English and Spanish):
ReplyDeleteDate of election
Address at which to verify registration or register (online).
Ballots to be sent out first week of October. (Sample ballots and candidates/ measures information before that—I think about two weeks before, typically, but this card doesn’t say.)
Where to submit ballots: mail (postage pre-paid), drop box (numbers being increased this year, available from four weeks before election day to 8PM election day) or vote center (open four days starting Oct. 31st).
Sign up online to get automatic notifications about your ballot.
Where to apply (online) to work at a vote center.
Where to get more information—e.g. for voters with disabilities, materials in multiple languages (English, Spanish, Chinese, Hmong, Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and Spanish).
Not bad. Their disabled access system sounds pretty good, at least to someone who doesn’t have any experience with such things:
What Is Remote Accessible Vote By Mail
Voters with disabilities can request and receive access to the Remote Accessible Vote by Mail system. The County of Fresno has selected Democracy Live Secure Select to provide this service. The Remote Accessible Vote by Mail system allows voters with disabilities to download and mark their correct ballot privately and independently using their own assistive technology, print their marked ballot, and mail it to the Elections Office to be counted.
That might almost be enough to persuade me to vote by mail even in normal time.
DeleteSeptember 1, 1939
ReplyDeleteW. H. Auden
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.
Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Wow. Thank you, puddle.
DeleteWow indeed.
DeleteAnd just like that, history repeats itself.
DeleteDanziger cartoon about online classes [Click] Schadenfreude U? Gotta get our fun where we can, even if it's a trifle severe.
ReplyDeleteBut then there is this: Crummy College Quarantine Food Goes Viral: A Lemon as a Side Dish? [Click] I’d expect better than is described here at an out of the way jail in Alabama or at a decently run prisoner of war camp.
DeleteNYT: President’s Sister Describes Trump as Liar With ‘No Principles’ in Recordings [Click] “In a series of recordings published by The Washington Post, Maryanne Trump Barry can be heard disparaging her brother’s performance as president.” And quite a bit more.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete