Restoration has started

It will take years. maybe decades, to bring sanity and normality to the U.S., but it has already started.  Trump’s name has been removed from the Kennedy Center (and a rainbow decorated the sky while it was happening).  

A judge just ordered exhibits taken down by the Trump Administration in National Park sites to be restored.  U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts wrote that the Trump efforts were meant “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen.”

In Philadelphia an exhibit discussing the lives of nine slaves of George Washington that had earlier been removed from the Independence National Historical Park was reinstalled in February.  (By the way, is there anyone left on the U.S. who did not know Washington owned slaves?)  

Calls are starting to restore the White House to its configuration before Trump starting messing it up.  We will eventually cleanse this mess.

Jeff Corle's "Empty Barn"

According to an article in the June 13 edition of Lancaster Farming, when Jeff Corle’s dairy farm went under, he thought about his loaded shotgun but instead picked up his guitar and wrote the song “Empty Barn.”  Now he travels around singing it solo and raising money for mental health awareness among farmers.

It’s available on YouTube.  I don’t think it will make the top 40, but it isn’t terrible, and I liked the photos of the cows.

Bags of sugar

Today I made a batch of strawberry jam.  You need lots of sugar for homemade jellies and jams, and Linda bought two bags.  She pointed out that the bags, which I assumed were five pound bags, were actually only four pounds.  They look the same as the five pound bags, but it’s there on the bag–four pounds.

It really is dishonest.  Of course it is legal, but it is wrong.  It is pulling a fast one on the consumer.  It is irritating.  The word for it is “shrinkflation,” but it is simply another form of inflation, and it is not only happening to sugar.  

I blame Trump.  

Family Reunion

Paul and I have been friends for most of our lives.  We went to the same church when we were kids, we were in 4-H Club together, and when I was in grad school at Penn State, Paul was an undergrad.  He is the only one of his six siblings still alive.

His family is now scattered across the country in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, California, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.  The younger generations have no knowledge of their ancestors, of the experience Paul and his brothers and sisters had growing up on a small dairy farm, their time in one-room schools, or where their great grandparents are buried.

Paul decided to invite them all to fly or drive back here for a two-day tour of cemeteries, schools, and other places important to the family.  Today they visited Kibler School, a one-room school house I attended, now owned by the Palmerton Area Historical Society.  I was the docent for the visit, and we served cake and lemonade.  I thought this was a wonderful way to hold a family “reunion,” so we put out a press release.  The local tv station and the local newspaper covered the school event. 

In addition to the school, the family members visited two cemeteries, the old homestead (still in the family), and a church, ending with a family picnic.  It was a good day.

Does Trump have dementia?

No, he does not.  Yes, he falls asleep.  Yes, he says incredibly stupid things.  But he has always said incredibly stupid things.  If you listen to some of his most outlandish statements, for example, “I love inflation,” he was trying to make the point that when the war ends inflation will come down, and he will look good.  Yes, it is stupid, but it does have some kind of internal logic.

The fact that he harps on the reflecting pool (i.e., “pond”) or that he wants to build a huge arch are not sighs of dementia.  They are signs of narcissism, and we are aware that he’s always had that.  Yes, he lies, but he has always lied.  Again not dementia, just lying.  So if you are hoping that at some point the Cabinet will step up and declare him unfit–won’t happen.  The way to stop him is in November when we elect a majority of Democrats to both houses of Congress.  Forget dementia.  Forget a stroke.  Forget impeachment.  

The way to oppose authoritarians is by opposing authoritarians every which way you can.  Register voters.  Put up signs.  Demonstrate.  Write letters to the editor.  Post stuff on Facebook.  Speak out in the grocery store.  Flood Fetterman (or your own Congress member) with letters.  Don’t quit.

Remarks on the Kidder Township Solar proposal

Plans are afoot to build a 300 acre solar farm in Kidder Township.  The plan calls for extensive grading and the destruction of quite a few wetlands.  An environmental group, Save Carbon County, is asking people to testify against the project.  I sent in the following statement to the PA DEP earlier this evening:

Remarks on the proposal for a solar installation in Kidder Township

Roy Christman, Ph.D., former adjunct in the San José State University Environmental Studies Department

Environmentalists love renewable energy.  If power is produced by solar panels or wind turbines we generally like it.  No mining is required, no drilling is needed, nothing is burned, no toxic fumes are emitted, no fly ash is produced.

Nonetheless, we must exercise caution when discussing “renewable” energy.  We can put a “pinwheel generator” on a stream to produce electricity, or we can build the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River to produce electricity.  Obviously the environmental impact is different.

We could also use wind power as either an example of environmentally sound or environmentally destructive energy production.  A wind turbine in the corner of an Iowa farmer’s field benefits both the farmer and the grid.  Iowa is not on a major migration flyway.  On the other hand, a similar wind turbine at Hawk Mountain would result in the slaughter of thousands of birds annually.  Both turbines produce “renewable” power, but the effects are very different.

One more example more pertinent to this hearing: my wife and I have solar panels on our shed roof.  In most months of the year those panels produce enough electrical power for our own needs and some extra for PPL Corporation.  That is renewable power production at its best.

On the other hand, a solar farm (love the word “farm”) that requires the destruction of hundreds of acres of trees, obliterates wetlands, requires extensive earth movement, and needs an upgrade on the grid is most definitely not “environmental.”  Let’s use some judgement here.  Let’s understand that “renewable” and “environmental” are really not synonymous.  And let’s halt this project.

Israel: What Went Wrong

That is the title of  book (which I have not read) by Omer Bartov.  Dr. Bartov was born in Israel, raised in a Zionist household, served four years in the IDF, and currently teaches at Brown University where he is a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies.

Bartov says that Zionism had two faces:  one that was liberating and pluralist; the other was ethnonationalist.  Since the founding, he says, the emancipatory element has receded while the ethnonationalist element has become a “state ideology.”

A country founded as a refuge from intolerance has acquired the traits of an increasingly remorseless ethnonationalism.  He is pessimistic about the future, noting that neither Israel nor the Palestinians have leadership capable of getting out of this morass.

I probably should read the book, but the Sunday Times review by Jennifer Szalai sounds absolutely depressing to anyone who hopes for peace in the Middle East.