I’m listening to a course from the Teaching Company entitled “A History of American Foreign Policy.” Tonight I learned that the Monroe Doctrine was actually written by Monroe’s Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.
I also learned that when President Tyler called for the annexation of Texas, it only passed the Senate by two votes. Just think, if only two Senators had switched their votes, we would have been rid of that canker south of Oklahoma.
A few weeks ago Linda and I received letters to inform us that we had been selected for jury duty and to report to the Courthouse in Jim Thorpe at 8:15 on August 30.
People often think that because you live on a farm, you get up early. This is a myth. Did you know the sun is barely up at 6:30?
Although we were told to arrive at 8:15, the doors to the Courthouse didn’t open until 8:30. We went in, registered, filled out a questionnaire to determine if we might be biased, (for example, would you think a defendant is likely to be guilty if he or she does not testify), and then waited until the attorneys decided who they wanted for the jury and two alternates. The whole thing lasted until 12:45, after the jury had been selected. The trial starts on Thursday morning.
I thought it was strange that Linda and I were selected together; I can’t imagine the two of us sitting on the same jury, and I also doubt if that jury would ever reach an agreement as to guilt or innocence. Anyway, it didn’t come up–neither of us was picked.
Tomorrow I submit my annual bat count to the Pennsylvania Game Commission. On two separate evenings I counted 17 and 18 coming out of Kibler School and 15 and 17 coming out of the bat house on the eastern side of my shed. I don’t know what accounts for the different numbers; theoretically I should have gotten the same count at each location. It is quite possible I missed one or two, of course.
The bats are doing better after the low point about five to seven years ago. Perhaps the ones that are left have some kind of immunity to the “white nose syndrome” that killed thousands in Pennsylvania and other states.
Last year I didn’t have any in the bat house, but about 35 in Kibler School. I’m thinking maybe the colony split up. I now have a new and larger house on the south side of the shed, but sometimes it takes a while before bats find their houses. Maybe next year.
Corman is the majority leader of the PA Republican Senate. Last November he said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the election. Then in January he said there were “inconsistencies” that needed to be investigated. In June he backtracked, saying that “We don’t need to relitigate 2020.”
Now, worried about the die-hard Trumpists, he committed to a “forensic audit” of the election.
Corman knows–he really knows–there was no fraud in the 2020 presidential election. This is a political move to pander to Trump’s base.
I served as a field representative for California State Senator Jerry Smith. I never saw anything that I would remotely consider illegal, immoral, or underhanded in the time I worked for Smith. Not all politicians are sleazy. Not all are willing to do anything to get re-elected. They aren’t all like Corman or Heffley or Argall or Mastriano. Maybe it’s a Pennsylvania thing.
Under Pennsylvania law your must register to vote at least 15 days before the election. This year the date is Oct. 18. It was like that for the primary as well. Although election day registration would increase turnout and the 15 day cut-off will disadvantage some groups (college students, for example), that date was not specifically adopted to disenfranchise certain groups.
Montana, on the other hand, allowed election day registration, a feature of election law that Montana’s Indian population took advantage of. Montana also allowed people to collect ballots in rural areas and bring them to the polling place. This also was a boon to Indians on reservations.
Now Montana is trying to take away election day registration and collecting ballots. Indians tend to vote Democratic. The legislature is Republican. The bills are aimed at decreasing Democratic votes. That, my friends, is voter suppression.
First the criticism: You never announce the exact date of departure. You don’t even announce the year of departure. You leave all of that ambiguous. You leave the other side wondering: Will these guys ever leave? By setting a date, the other side can take a break, knowing they will be taking over by that set date.
Now the defense: Quitting a war is never easy, especially when the departure involves civilians. You can get your troops out, although the last few contingents may be a problem. On the other hand, getting out with hundreds of thousands of civilians is almost impossible.
Had the U.S. started to airlift civilians and supporters out of Afghanistan months ago, that would have been clear signal that we had no faith in the Afghan government to hold off the Taliban. You may say, who did have faith, but that country had an army the U.S. military had been training for years. I certainly was surprised at how quickly things fell apart.
I have no doubt that whenever we had started to airlift our civilian allies out of the country, panic would have ensued. As bad as things are, there was little we could have done better, especially since few countries have been willing to take large numbers of Afghans. Unfortunately, this includes the United States.
This evening I attended a meeting of the Towamensing Township Zoning Hearing Board. Here’s the way it works. The Township has a zoning ordinance. Let’s say you want to do something forbidden by the ordinance, for example, open and Air B&B in a rural conservation area. (That was the issue this evening.) You can go to the Planning Commission. If the Planning Commission says yes, then the Supervisors can approve, and they usually do what the Planning Commission says.
But let’s say the Planning Commission says no and the Supervisors say no. Then you can appeal to the Zoning Hearing Board, although you must pay a hefty fee to make that appeal. The Zoning Hearing Board, a three-member board, conducts a legal proceeding with attorneys and a court stenographer.
The hearing began at 7 p.m. and was still going on at 10:10 when I left. It was winding down; the last person was testifying–for the second time. I testified against granting the variance. I pointed out that I had helped rewrite the Township zoning ordinance, and those ordinances are not done lightly. The provisions are discussed at length before adoption, and you better have a good reason to be granted a variance from the rules. Plus, any variance granted sets a precedent.
I don’t know if the Board will rule this evening or take the whole case under advisement. I’m betting they uphold the ordinance and do not grant the variance. I thought I was pretty convincing.
Today’s Lehighton Times News had a front page picture of a group protesting the Lehighton Area School Board’s decision that students be required to wear masks. One woman carried a sign that said “Parents Choice! Our Kids Our Right No masks.” You think I’m about to decry the lack of the possessive or the use of three explanation points, but I’m not. Those are minor.
What struck me was the guy next to her carrying a sign with the same message. He was wearing a tee shirt that said “Don’t Blame Me. I voted for Trump.”
No, no, no. When you hold a protest, you do it on one subject only. You don’t alienate potential allies. My first thought when I saw the guy’s tee was, “Oh, another one of those sore losers.”
Also, you want to make the object of your protest clear. One woman was holding up a sign that said “Choice, not mandate,” and I thought she had wandered in from an abortion rights rally.
People, people. Do it right or don’t do it.
My Aunt Viola was a wonderful cook and baker. She passed on years ago, and I still have relatives who rave about her pies, especially the crusts. She was also “old school.” To make jelly you need a substance called pectin. You can get it from green apples, and that is what Viola used. I don’t think she ever canned pasta sauce since my Uncle Marvin didn’t care for tomatoes, but if she had, it would have been with fresh and natural ingredients.
Me, not so much. Last night I made a squash pie. You just substitute squash for pumpkin in the recipe, and I like the delicate flavor. Here’s what I did for the crust. I went to the refrigerator, pulled a crust out of the Pillsbury ready-made crust box, and unrolled that sucker into the pie pan.
As for pectin, there’s something called “Sure Jell.” A powder that comes in a small box, you add it to the fruit mixture along with sugar and a bit of butter to keep down the foam. The heck with little green apples.
For pasta sauce I use Mrs. Wages “Pasta Sauce” mix. After you use a food processor to prepare the tomatoes, you stir in Mrs. Wages pre-mixed ingredients and a bit of sugar and follow the directions on boiling time. It might not be Ragu, but it uses up our tomatoes, and it is quite tasty.
I’m pretty sure Aunt Viola would roll her eyes.
The artist Robert Henri spent much of his early childhood in Cozad, Nebraska. Henri is famous for his portraits, and his art has held up well. He didn’t stay in Cozad, of course, but spent time in the East and in Paris.
We stopped in to see his house. (Cozad is on I-80). An elderly volunteer took us through the house and told us the Nebraskans call him Robert Henri, pronounced “Hen-Rye.”
Of course, after a stay in Paris and fame, his name is pronounced “Row-bare Ahn-Ree.” I like the Nebraska pronunciation better. To me this tropical storm, which is right now dumping rain on eastern Pennsylvania, will be known as “Hen-Rye.” If it is good enough for Nebraska, it’s good enough for me.
Recently rain fell in a part of Greenland where only snow usually falls. What is even worse, the area with the rain is a darker color than the snow, which means more heat will be absorbed rather than reflected.
The world-wide decline of insects is starting to be noticed even by people who don’t care about insects. Not as many fireflies, are there? When is the last time you saw a Luna moth or a Cecropia moth?
Before you say “Who cares about insects?” you might want to think about pollination of fruits and vegetables.
We are awfully blasé about this issue. Some people, of course, think global warming is a hoax. That QAnon idiot from Georgia just said something to that effect. It gets depressing.
Ordinarily it is a good thing that my readers span the globe. OK, maybe not the globe, but at least as far as Grass Valley, California. On the other hand, sometimes it seems unfair for me to write about local matters and activities.
Still, I do it. If you live within 75 to 100 miles of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, I want to recommend the Robert Beck exhibition at the Michener Art Museum. He’s an amazing artist, sometimes painting an event while it is happening, then redoing it in his studio. The exhibition has two paintings side-by-side of three surgeons operating. The painting done in the operating room has broad stokes and was obviously done while the operation was in progress.. The second, larger and finished in the studio, looks “finished.” The blood on the gloves and gowns, for example, isn’t as splashy. They are both excellent, but I like the quick study better.
If you go, also check out “Whistler’s dog” and look at the Manhattan street scene in the snow. Amazing show.
The good news just keeps coming. Chlorpyrifos, used as a pesticide since 1965, has been proven to cause neurological damage to children. The phase-out started under the Obama Administration, but the Trump administration ignored the science and kept the pesticide on the market.
Judge Jed Rake-off of the 9th Circuit, which ruled on the ban, said the E.P.A. under Trump “sought to evade, through one delaying tactic after another, its plain statutory duties.”
If I were editing the New York Times, this would have been front page news, but you can find it on page A13 in today’s paper. I am always amazed at what pesticide and herbicide companies will do for money. But I guess that is what capitalism is about.
This has been a good week. It saw the end of the Byhalia Connection pipeline, which was slated to go beneath a fragile sand aquifer that supplies much of the drinking water for Shelby County, where Memphis is located. The pipeline also went through a historic black neighborhood; residents there were told the company was taking the “point of least resistance.”
A coalition of opponents, including Al Gore, the Sierra Club, Danny Glover, and Justin Timberlake, with the Southern Environmental Law Center taking the lead, succeeded in stopping the pipeline.
Time for my happy dance.
Info for this post is from Margaret Renkl, “A Rare Victory Against Environmental Racism, New York Times, (Aug. 18, 2021), p. A19.
Pennsylvania has what I consider lax gun laws, but at least gun owners must apply for a license to carry a concealed weapon. It isn’t much of a roadblock, but you can’t go out and buy a handgun, load it, and carry it around in your pocket without that license.
Pennsylvania House Bill 659 will change that. Any gun owner could carry a concealed weapon. I have not studied the bill, but I don’t think it applies to the legislative offices. I think it should.
President Biden is coming in for a pile of criticism for the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. People clinging to the planes, 600 people crowded into one plane, the Taliban already beheading people. I will say it would have been hard to predict how fast the Afghan army would collapse, but, yeah, we should have done better.
On the other hand, there is no excuse for the Biden Administration to support the construction of Line 3, a pipeline bringing tar sands through Ojibwe reservation land. This benefits Enbridge, a giant petrochemical company and one of the partners in the proposed PennEast pipeline that would go through our farm. When the earth is getting warmer by the month, why would the Biden Administration go along with the Line 3 pipeline. This is a preventable disaster.
I sense that people are losing patience with the unvaccinated. They are losing patience with people who say “It’s a personal decision,” when obviously it’s not; it puts the rest of us at risk. They are losing patience with overcrowded hospitals, with governors who minimize the pandemic, with people who politicize science.
Jason Arena from North Carolina went into an obscenity-laced rant after his wife, who suffers from breast cancer and needed hospital treatment, was sent home to make room for Covid patients. Mr. Arena pointed out that if you don’t trust the medical profession to prevent you from getting Covid, why would you trust that same medical profession to cure you from it. In Mr. Arena’s words, “Stick to your fucking guns and keep your mother-fucking ass at home.”
The rant, originally on TikTok, has been viewed by over three million people.
This is the name often given to Afghanistan. Major empires from the Greek to the British to the Russian to the American have run up against indigenous opposition. Kandahar, which just fell to the Taliban, was laid out in part by Alexander the Great, but the Greeks didn’t stay long. (Say Alexander and Kandahar together a few times.) Obviously these people know how to fight.
Which means, to me, they don’t want to fight the Taliban. Think about the training, the latest weaponry, the air support. As one provincial capital after another falls, there is almost no fighting. Few deaths or casualties from a battle. That means the American-trained Afghan army has no interest in fighting.
While I feel bad for the women of Afghanistan (and why were’t they trained?), it is obvious that another four or eight years would not have made a difference if twenty years didn’t make a difference.
Imagine if the Afghans were Kurds and the Taliban tried to take over their territory. Do you think we’d be hearing about provincial capitals falling?
“I think as we all recognize, democracy is more than taking a vote. We’ve had a number of countries take votes quickly fall into disrepair from a democratic standpoint in part because they don’t have the institutions that allow democracy to survive. Attacking the institutions here puts democracy itself in jeopardy, whether it’s our judicial system, our freedom of the press, our intelligence community, the FBI–these things underpin the strength of our democratic republic. So he attacked those along the way, and then, as a final act, attacked election integrity itself. Those things have real consequences.”
That quote is from I Alone Can Fix It by Carol Leonnig and Phillip Rucker. I have two thoughts. First, I’d leave the FBI off the statement. Secondly, I wonder if the Republican Party would be willing to trade Romney for Manchin.
When the closing ceremonies were underway at the Olympics, I thought to myself: Will I still be here for the next one in Paris? When the Super Bowl is over, I think: Will I still be here when the fall season starts. (The exhibition game this weekend has the Eagles playing the Steelers, so I made it.) When the cicadas came out 17 years ago, I thought: I probably won’t be around when the next brood emerges. I was, but I”m pretty sure that will be the last one. 78 + 17 = 95. No way.
The PennEast pipeline company was supposed to present a federal judge with the case for eminent domain proceedings against 18 landowners. Among those landowners were Linda and I. The PennEast attorney told the judge that the company had decided to forego the proceedings–something about the “regulatory climate” no longer favoring pipelines.
The company probably will keep the plans for the pipeline in corporate headquarters somewhere, but this pipeline is kaput, dead, gone. After a seven-year battle, the opponents won. The people fighting the pipeline demonstrated, wrote letters, appealed to legislators, held press conferences and fundraisers and hired lawyers and they won. The opponents testified to the Federal Energy Commission, the Delaware River Basin Commission, county commissioners, township supervisors, the Army Corps of Engineers, and they won.
Given the accelerating global warming, the defeat of a fossil fuel procured by pumping radioactive poisons into the ground is not only a victory for the pipeline opponents, but also a victory for the planet.
And here I must give a shout-out to Linda Christman, one of the leaders in the fight to stop this pipeline. PennEast had no idea what was about to hit them.
The Pennsylvania Game News, published by the Game Commission, has a recurring feature entitled “The Naturalist’s Eye,” written by Marcia Bonta. In the latest issue Ms. Bonta discusses the common nighthawks, an interesting bird with white wing bars and throat.
I have never seen one. I probably never will. The “common” nighthawk is no longer common. Between 1983-89 and 2004-2009 the nighthawk had the biggest decline of all the birds studied in Pennsylvania. One reason perhaps is fewer insects because of pesticides. Nighthawks do use man-made structures to nest, especially flat roofs with gravel topping. Unfortunately, few roofs are made that way anymore.
When Liz Cheney was removed from her leadership post by the House Republicans, she was replaced by Elise Stefanik of New York. Rep. Stefanik told Sean Hannity that the House Committee looking into the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was “trying to shame over 70 million Americans who were standing up fro constitutional and election integrity issues.”
She also said, “Republicans are focused on the facts.”
Rep. Stefanik had once been very critical of Trump. Now she thinks her political career will be aided by sucking up to Trump, lying about the riot, and generally selling out. It is difficult for me to believe how much rot there is among so many leading Republicans.
In case you were wondering why so many people are willing to risk their own lives, allow time for the Covid virus to develop new and more deadly strains, overtax our health care system, help to spread the virus, and damage our economy, here are the reasons they give. (This is according a study detailed in the Aug. 1 New York Times.)
Worried about side effects 53%
Waiting to see if it is safe 40%
Don’t trust vaccines 37%
Don’t trust government 27%
Don’t believe I need it 26%
Other (?) 16%
Other people need it more 11%
Don’t like vaccines 10%
Doctor hasn’t recommended 7%
Concerned about costs 3%
Some of these supposed reasons make no sense. First of all, what is in the “other” category? Tucker Carlson told me not to? “Don’t believe I need it” and “don’t like vaccines” sound like a five-yer-old. “Concerned about costs” is bizarre when the vaccines are free. “Other people need it more” is also strange when we now have a surplus of the vaccines and are shipping them to other countries.
Recently I read that Bitcoin operations are being located near power plants. The reason is because Bitcoin “mining” takes enormous amounts of energy.
I fail to understand why we need a new form of exchange that seems mostly used by trolls who hold companies for ransom, by crooks, by speculators, and now, in a world that is warming by the year, requires immense amounts of energy.
The Carbon County Democratic Party held its annual summer picnic at Memorial Park in Jim Thorpe. Candidates or their representatives were there for state-wide judicial offices as well as the 2022 U.S. Senate race. There was not a single candidate, in my opinion, who was unqualified. Not one candidate believed in conspiracy theories or said anything stupid or insulted anyone. Everyone was intelligent, well-spoken, and empathetic.
There have been elections in the past in which I have a hard time deciding among lousy candidates. The problem with Democratic primary races, like the one for the 2022 U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania, is that I want to vote for all of them. What a contrast with the Republican candidates in that Senate race–all of them unfit for office.
I wonder what Dwight Eisenhower, the father of the Interstate Highway system, would say if he knew about all the repairs currently underway. I also need to find out what company makes those big orange barrels and invest in it, since we saw thousands of them.
Every state except Maryland had long stretches of their interstates undergoing repairs. Occasionally traffic backed up for miles. We dreaded the warnings about construction ahead.
I-81 in Maryland is only about 11 miles long, so maybe I shouldn’t even mention Maryland.
