American know how

 It’s gone.  Remember when we could put people on the moon?  Remember when we had the can-do spirit?  

In May a barge damaged the I-40 bridge across the Mississippi at Memphis.  Here we are, almost in August, and that bridge is not fixed.  I read that China was able to bridge a large river in a weekend.  

We were in an eight-mile line to get across the remaining bridge.  Once we got to the Arkansas side, there was another eight to ten-mile line of cars and trucks to get into Tennessee.  Ridiculous.

By the way, we aren’t coming home that way.

Bristol, Tenn.

 We ate dinner at the State Line restaurant on State Line Road.  Across the street was Virginia.  Bristol bills itself as “the Birthplace of Country Music,” but a much more accurate description would be “the Birthplace of RECORDED country music,” since that seems to be what happened here about 1928.

Two women who came into the motel to register were the only people we saw today with masks.  As we get deeper into Tennessee and then Arkansas, we plan to wear ours.  The Delta variant is alive and well down here.  

The voters of Tennessee, of course, are the people who elected Rand Paul, so we shouldn’t be surprised if few of them are vaccinated and none of them wear masks.  

Bhutan shows the way

 A small item in today’s Times News said that the kingdom of Bhutan (pop. 800,000) managed to vaccinate 90% of its population in just one week.  The first dose was given in April, but then India, which suppled the AstraZeneca shots, started using the vaccine in India and stopped shipments.  The second dose was supplied by a number of countries, including the U.S., which provided a half a million Moderna doses.  Why not?  They aren’t using them in Texas or Arkansas.

I am guessing that Bhutan doesn’t have Fox News or Facebook.

Note:  We leave for Texas tomorrow.  I’ll try to post along the way, but we are going through some remote areas, so it might not happen.  Plus I might get shot after I make fun of some “open carry” butthole.

The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop

 In American Studies we assigned “Up the Coulee,” a story from Main-Traveled Roads written by Hamlin Garland and published in 1891.  I don’t remember too much about it except that a farm boy returns to the midwest after years in the east and realizes how bleak midwestern farm life really is.

About a month ago I was looking for something to read and pulled out a novel by Garland entitled The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop published in 1902.  The book is melodramatic and includes a romance between an Indian agent and the daughter of a Senator who thinks Indians should be exterminated.  

What struck me about the novel was the sympathetic treatment of American Indians.  The Indian agent does his best to treat the Indians with respect, and he is almost killed trying to prevent a lynch mob of cowboys and settlers from hanging an Indian who killed a white man encroaching on the reservation.  

Here is a quotation:  “It seems as though our settlers were insane over Indian lands.  I honestly believe, if we should lay out a reservation on the staked plains there’d be a mad rush for it. ‘The Injun has it–let’s take it away from him,’ seems to be the universal cry.  I am pestered to death with schemes for cutting down reservations and removing tribes.  It would seem as if these poor, hunted devils might have a thumb-nails breadth of the continent they once entirely owned; but no, so long as an acre exists they are liable to attack.”

(The staked plains are the name given to the eastern part of New Mexico and the north-west part of Texas.)

F-word Trump

 A woman in a New Jersey town put a large sign in her yard that says “Fuck Biden.”  The Trump supporters are noted for their bad manners and vulgarity, so we shouldn’t be surprised.  Nonetheless, some of the woman’s neighbors complained (the woman lives near an elementary school), and the town ordered the woman to take down the sign. 

Of course she will go to court.  What’s more, she will win.  I would have to support her, since political statements can be vulgar or in bad taste, and people have a right to do that.

The neighbors have the wrong strategy.  They should have put up their own signs that said “F-word Trump.”  That would have been clever and made the vulgar woman look silly.  By going to court, the town will make her into a martyr, and she will complain about liberal censorship.  Trump supporters love that kind of thing.  

What they can’t stand is ridicule.  Don’t get angry at them.  Laugh at them.

The Appalachian Trail

 The Appalachian Trail is 2190 miles long, running from Georgia’s Springer Mountain to Maine’s Mount Katahdin.  Three million people walk on it annually.  I’m not one of them, and I’m not proud of that.  After all, the trail is less than ten miles from my house.  I’m on it when I cross the bridge over the Lehigh driving from Palmerton to Slatington, and I’ve walked about 100 yards from the road that goes over the Blue Mountain at Little Gap.  I should make that “climbed” about 100 yards–the Trail there is among the roughest parts along the whole route.  Nonetheless, I am ashamed to say that I have not taken advantage of this world class trail. 

Maybe this fall I could do at least a mile or two.

Tax cheats

 You know how Republicans are always for law and order, how they want to crack down on criminals, how they support the “thin blue line,” how they want penalties and jail terms increased.

Don’t believe a word of it.  The Democrats in Congress are trying to strengthen the ability of the I.R.S. to audit more tax returns, especially returns of high income taxpayers.  The Republicans in Congress are opposed.  They have admitted they don’t want people audited.  Some have said audits are a “political tool.”  

There’s nothing “political” about it.  If you don’t pay the taxes you owe, you have committed a crime, same as if you robbed a bank.  Go to jail.

Note that for regular workers, our taxes are automatically deducted.  My two main jobs were warehouseman and professor, and for both of those jobs, my taxes were taken out before I received my paycheck.  There was no reason to audit me.

So who cheats?  Rich people.  Hedge fund owners.  Trump.  

I am really tired of people who call themselves patriots, talk about saving America, put little flags on their lapels, and then cheat on their taxes.

Biden's town hall in Ohio

 He certainly wasn’t glib, but he wasn’t mean, didn’t lie, was authentic, cared, knew his stuff.  There was an old saw that every president makes his predecessor look good.  That certainly isn’t the case with Biden and Trump.

Drought in Utah

 When we drove to California in June we went by a lake just north of Coalville, Utah.  It was the first time I saw the lake when it wasn’t full, and it was way down.  Today I read that the town of Oakley, about 20 miles south of Coalville, has stopped issuing building permits because the town authorities doubt if water will be available.  Marin County, where we lived for nine years, is also thinking about restricting new housing.

Less than one mile west of our house here in Pennsylvania is a subdivision with 36 lots.  Six houses have gone up in the past year in that subdivision.  All depend on well water.  I was on the Planning Commission when the subdivision was approved.  I asked whether we should require tests to see if the aquifer was capable of supporting that many homes, but I was assured it wasn’t necessary.

We’ll see.

If I had Jeff Bezos's money...

 I’d have to think very long about what I’d do with it.

I could outspend the Koch Brothers and elect liberals to office, or buy up thousands of acres of farmland and donate it to the Pennsylvania Farmland Preservation program, or buy the Morning Call and the Times News and the Baltimore Sun (Bezos bought the Washington Post, a good thing), or provide thousands of college scholarships to students based on their income levels, or pay mercenaries to hunt down elephant poachers, or fund rooftop solar panels for the entire state of Kansas, or finance a crash program aimed at curing muscular dystrophy.  I’d look up how Andrew Carnegie funded all those libraries; maybe I could add to that.  Maybe I’d buy up all of Pike County and give it to the Lenape tribe.

One thing I wouldn’t do is fund a rocket for “space tourism.”  

The Plague Year

I just finished The Plague Year:  America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright.  I thought I knew the story well, but Wright’s telling of the year-long events is gripping and sometimes depressing.  

He notes the times we could have had a handle on this disease.  The first one we couldn’t do much about; the government of China initially downplayed Covid-19 and actually punished people who tried to get the word out about the seriousness of the disease.

The second time is when we had only a few cases, but we allowed people to congregate, to fly, to board airplanes and cruise ships.  We simply did not take the disease seriously.  Remember our President saying it would go away, like a miracle.

The third time, Wright says, is if we had cooperation in mask wearing.  Instead the disease itself became politicized, downplayed and mishandled by the Administration.  We forget the mistakes made by Mayor DeBlasio and Gov. Cuomo or Dr. Fauci in the early days.  On the other hand, some political and medical leaders learned from their mistakes.  Some leaders never learned anything and continued to screw up the Covid response.  And some, like the Governor of South Dakota, doubled down as deaths went up.  

Probably many books will be written about America’s botched response, but this one sets a high standard. 

Letter to PA State Senator David Argall

 Dear Senator Argall:

I had always thought of you as one of the reasonable Republican legislators.  As a liberal Democrat I frequently disagreed with your positions on public policy, but I thought your were an honorable man with integrity.

Now I understand you have joined the chorus of Trump sycophants calling for a “forensic audit.”  You are either not very bright, or you are trying to curry favor with diehard Trumpists.  I am certain it is the latter, and I am sorry to see you go down that path.

I believe you are doing great harm to our democracy for the sake of personal political gain.  I expected more of you.

Roy Christman

[It gets mailed tomorrow.]

Dumb animals and Covid-19

 The mammals at the Lehigh Valley Zoo are now being vaccinated against Covid.  Luckily the zoo doesn’t have a jackass; I understand they are “vaccine-hesitant.”

Speaking of that, why aren’t the people who refuse to take the vaccine charged more for health insurance?  I understand that people who smoke pay more, and certainly the unvaccinated pose a greater risk.  Actually they are worse than smokers.  Smokers, unless they smoke indoors, usually only put themselves at risk.  People who refuse to be vaccinated put everybody at risk.

Note:  If you read last night’s post, you may wonder how the gooseberry pie turned out.  It was awful.  Luckily I had bought a pint of vanilla ice cream to go with the pie.  The ice cream was good.

Gooseberry pie

 Tonight I decided to make a gooseberry pie.  I forgot what a major task it is.  First of all, gooseberries grow on really thorny bushes.  Secondly, I was picking after a thundershower when the mosquitoes were especially ravenous.  

If you don’t know about gooseberries, each berry has both a stem and a little black “tail” opposite the stem.  Both have to be removed, which means each berry requires two separate operations.  While they are bigger than blueberries, they aren’t all that big, so preparing them took an hour and a half–you need four cups for a nine inch pie.

It was too late to make the pie tonight, so the berries, now ready, are in the refrigerator.  Next time I will buy a damn pie.

Press Conference in New Jersey

 This morning we drove to Trenton, the State Capitol of New Jersey, to participate in a press conference thanking the Governor of that state, Phil Murphy, for his efforts to block the PennEast pipeline.  New Jersey held that a private for-profit company could not use eminent domain to take agricultural and park land protected by a state government.  Last month the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the pipeline on a 5-4 vote.  

Our group thanked Gov. Murphy for taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court, and we urged the Governor not to give up the fight, since there are still state permits under the Clean Water Act that can be denied.  

Gov. Wolf, our own governor, welcomed the PennEast pipeline, in keeping with Pennsylvania’s bi-partisan effort to support extractive industries at the expense of its citizens and its environment.

Why China is winning

 The subject of the latest issue of the magazine Foreign Affairs is China.  The leadership of China is convinced that the U.S. is in decline.  A number of authors note that Chinese leaders are increasingly confident that China can absorb Taiwan and the U.S. will do nothing.  The Chinese also believe that American “soft power” of leading by example is also in decline.

The Chinese are correct.  I live in a country where mass shooting are common, one party is passing laws to cripple the other party, a minority in the Senate prevents legislation from being passed, the former president incites a forceable takeover of the Capitol, conspiracy theorists win elections, and influential commentators on Fox tell people Covid vaccines are a government plot.

Science is ignored like it was in the Dark Ages.  The rich dominate politics. The unelected Supreme Court sets policy more than Congress.  People get their news from Facebook and Twitter.  

Go ahead.  Add to the list.  Perhaps China has already won.

The National Spelling Bee

 Zaila Avant-garde, a 14-year-old Black eighth grader from Louisiana, won the National Spelling Bee competition this year.

In 1936 MacNolia Cox, 13, a Black girl from Akron, made it to the final round of the National.  She was forced to sit in the back of the train to Washington, and she and her mom were not allowed to eat with the other spellers or their parents.  To get to the precontest banquet, she and her mom were not even allowed into the elevator.  They took the stairs.  I am always amazed at how petty racial discrimination can be.

Ms. Cox made it to the final round with four others.  According to one report, the judges, all from the South, were growing uncomfortable.  They gave her the word Nemesis, the god of divine retribution and revenge.  It was not on the list of 100,000 words she had studied; it was technically a proper noun and not eligible as a contest word.  She misspelled it and was out.  

Biden goes for the wrong type of energy

 The usual way to look at energy production is renewable vs. non-renewable.  Solar is good, coal is bad. This is the wrong way to look at energy production, however.  Way back in 1977 Amory Lovins explained that energy could be either hard or soft.  Hard energy needed a large capital investment, was centralized, and required a distribution grid. 

Thus solar power that is generated from panels on our shed roof is soft energy.  Solar power generated in a giant array (there’s a picture of such a plant in today’s New York Times) and distributed by a power company like Pacific Gas and Electric, would be hard.  Hard energy production tends to enrich stock holders, is vulnerable to hackers or terrorists, and any breakdowns can affect millions of users.

For some reason unknown to me, the Biden administration is opting for centralized systems.  It may be easier to build, and it certainly will be more popular with the existing utilities, but a combination of tax credits and financial incentives could be used for the “soft” path. 

See Ivan Penn and Clifford Krauss, "U.S. Confronts Critical Choices on Power Lines," New York Times, (June 12, 2021), pp A1, A16.

New County Party Chair

At a special meeting of Carbon County Democratic Committee members this morning, Tina Henninger of Lower Towamensing Township was elected County Chair and Nate Halenar of Summit Hill was elected Vice Chair.  Billy O’Gurek, who served as County Chair for the past ten years, resigned because of other time commitments.

Henninger will take over a unified and determined Democratic Party.  The Republican Party, captured by a strange mixture of Q-Anon supporters, Trump die-hards, and anti-vaxxers, has been losing support in Carbon County in recent months, especially since the attempt to subvert the election on January 6. 

"Summer of Soul"

 In mid-August 1969 I was living at a friend’s house in New Jersey and commuting to New York for an internship at the United Nations.  I “worked” in the Secretariat Building, but mostly I interviewed diplomats for my Ph.D. dissertation about the efforts of the U.N. to end colonialism 

The New York Port Authority Building for a few days was full of muddy hippies returning from the Woodstock Festival.  What I didn’t know was that on six Sundays that summer a Harlem Cultural Festival was happening in Morris Park.

The Festival had been filmed, but the tapes were in a basement and never shown–until now.  The film “Summer of Soul” is currently playing, with cuts of the various musicians including B. B. King, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Nina Simone, and many more.  

The previous summer Harlem had erupted in riots.  Not in 1969.  Mayor John Lindsey, a liberal Republican, welcomed the crowd at the first concert, and in all about 300,000 people attended the events.  The music is absolutely wonderful, and the clothes and hairdos are alone worth the price of admission.  

Or you can waste your money on “Black Widow” or the 9th installment of the “The Fast and the Spurious.”

Internet harassment in France

 An 16-year-old gay French teenager went on-line with an anti-Islamic rant in which she said “I hate religion” and “The Quran is a religion of hatred.”  She made other nasty comments about Islam and God.

In return she received more than 100,000 hateful messages, some of which threatened rape and murder.

On Wednesday 11 men and women from around France were charged with on-line harassment of the teenager; they were given suspended prison sentences of four to six months.  They also had to pay fines and attorney fees.  Meanwhile the teenager had to withdraw from school and now has police protection.

Some of the defendants said they didn’t think the teenager would read the messages, or they didn’t mean what they said.  The judge said, “Social networks are the street.  What you wouldn’t do in the street–don’t do it on social networks.”

President Macron said, “We have abandoned the basic rules of public order when it comes to the internet.”

See Aurelien Breeden, “French Court Convicts 11 in Harassment Of Teenager for Anti-Islam Rant in Video,” New York Times, (July 8, 2021), p. A8.

Military blunders

 Today I finished a course from the Teaching Company entitled “Military Blunders.”  We listened to about a dozen of the 24 lectures on our return from California, including accounts of disasters like Napoleon’s retreat from Russia, the Battle of Little Big Horn, and the Charge of the Light Brigade.  Sometimes we would just look at each other in disbelief when we heard details of the some of the debacles.

The last lecture, which I heard today, summed up the failures.  The professor was amazed that military leaders didn’t seem to learn from past mistakes.  He then gave what he felt was the best example.  Keep in mind that this course was recorded in 2008.

His example was the area of Afghanistan and western Pakistan.  He noted that armies have been fighting over this piece of territory since Alexander the Great.  The Persians fought here, as did the Mongols, the British, and the Russians, among others.  He noted that the terrain is rugged, with places to hide and launch guerrilla warfare.  He noted the mixture of tribal groups, and the lack of centralized control.  Modern armies that believed the primitive people could be brought to heel kept losing, and he wondered why military leaders failed to heed historical lessons.  Good question.

Where freedom was fightin' another foe...

 I was in junior high when Walt Disney;s “Davy Crockett” came out.  I loved the show, bought a coonskin cap, and admired Crockett.  The last episode was so sad.  There he was, on the wall of the Alamo, battling those Mexicans for freedom.

Except he wasn’t.  A new book entitled “Forget the Alamo” published by Penguin Press tells the whole story in detail, noting that Mexico was a destination for escaping slaves, since that country had outlawed slavery.  The Anglo settlers in Texas had a hard time raising cotton without their slaves, and they wanted to bring them in.  Hence, the war against Mexico.

I understand that societies like to hang on to their heroic founding myths, but the Alamo “battle for freedom” goes too far.

Too bad Mexico didn’t build a wall.

As for Crockett, he wasn’t such a bad guy.  He gave a great speech during the Jackson administration in defense of Indian rights, and probably really did think he was doing a good thing/

And just in case you wonder what the full verse says, here it is:

He heard of Houston an' Austin so/  to the Texas plains he just had to go/  where freedom was fightin' another foe,/  an' they needed him at the Alamo./  Davy, Davy Crockett, the man who don't know fear.

Ranking Serena Williams

 If you are a regular reader, you are probably aware that I sometimes spout off on subjects about which I know very little.  Here I go again, this time on women’s tennis.  

What I do know is that Serena Williams may be the the best woman tennis player ever.  What I didn’t know was that the Women’s Tennis Association does not allow any type of maternity leave.  That means when a tennis player has a baby, as Ms. Williams did, her ranking goes down.  When the tennis mother comes back to the courts, she then needs to rebuild her ranking.  

I also know when rules are not fair.

Don Quixote and Trump

 I’m reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.  It was a gift from a good friend of mine who thought I needed to read it.  The book is 940 pages long, and I am over half way though it.  

Our hero Don Quixote, after reading romance novels of knights in shining armor doing heroic acts, decides he will set forth to right wrongs, perform good deeds, and serve and protect beautiful ladies.  He convinces Sancho Panza to be his squire, and off they ride.

Don Quixote, unfortunately, makes his own reality.  In one of his first adventures, he encounters windmills but sees only giants to battle.  In book two a rather unattractive peasant girl becomes, in his eyes, a beautiful princess.  Although he does see that she is quite plain with a large hairy mole, he convinces himself that the princess is under there, but he has been “enchanted.”  She might look poor and unattractive, but she’s really wealthy and quite beautiful.

So it is, as Senator Dave Argall and Representative Doyle Heffley ride off to save President Trump.  Trump may have lost a fair and honest election in Pennsylvania, but they are enchanted.  They know that appearances are deceiving.  Trump is the beautiful princess who really won.  Everybody who is rational and reasonable looks upon them with both pity and wonder, but they make their own reality.

The difference is that Don Quixote means well.  He wants to do the right thing.  People like Heffley and Argall do not have his good intentions.

Note:  Last evening, for the second day in a row, we lost power.  Somebody ran into a tree on Pohopoco about a mile east of here and the tree knocked down a power line.

No electricity

 The thundershower this evening knocked out the power.  No computer.  No printer.  No WiFi.  No television.  No light to read by.  No stove to make jam.  Refrigerator starting to warm up.

Only one thing to do.  I took a nap.  A few minutes after I woke up, the power came back. 

If an enemy wants to win the war against the U.S., it won’t need drones or bombs or germ warfare.  All it needs to do is knock out the power grid.

Banning plastic bags

I’ve never seen a ranking of states by their support for environmental causes, but I’m fairly sure that Pennsylvania would be near the bottom.  One bright spot was that a number of Pennsylvania cities had banned the use of plastic bags..  These are the bags that end up in the ocean and in whales’ and sea turtles’ stomachs or hang from tree limbs and fences. 

In 2019 the Republican-controlled legislature said that cities did not have that power.  The bill had a sunset clause, and this year the legislators neglected to re-enact the pre-emption.  Philadelphia and Pittsburg are already moving to ban the bags.

In the meantime, when you go into a store, take a cloth bag along with you.