DRIED UP ALL WET

Things have gotten very weird in a hurry. People insist upon being confused. Basic, fundamental, scientific realities are now open to debate. For example, are you a man or a woman?

Forgive me, but this seems like an amazingly stupid thing to argue about. As a “child care professional” I see very small children are very aware if they are born into a male or female body. Their “science” is simple. As they gain coordination, their hands become able to feel between their legs, and they understand, “This birth I am born into a male (or female) body.” If a two-year-old can arrive at such a simple conclusion, how amazingly stupid are those who can’t?

This stupidity has been a sort of blindness which has ripened like a cataract over the years, (and hopefully now can be operated upon and removed.) It is due to a simple mathematical equation: Science + Politics = Politics – Science. (Also: Science + Politics = Politics.)

A true scientist in some senses is like a poet, in that his thirst for Truth tends to cause him to neglect fashion and proper grooming, and he tends to walk about in a disheveled state with a wild gleam in his eye. Also, he tends to be broke, and unattractive to women, or at least women who desire money, and consequently he tends to feel lonely and sorry for himself, which leaves him open to temptation. He (or she) may be susceptible to a bribe. Money may not slake his (or her) thirst for Truth, but may gratify his (or her) hankering for blonds.

That is where politics steps in, for politicians often deal in short, sound-bite solutions that sound good but are not deeply thought out. This is not a problem when the politician surrounds himself with people who do think deeply, and also is a politician willing to stand corrected. One of Winston Churchill’s aides once said something along the lines of, “Winnie has a hundred ideas a day, and three are good ones.” Churchill’s genius (in part) lay in being able to stand being corrected ninety-seven times a day without any loss of confidence (which some mistook as arrogance). Unfortunately, many politicians lack such genius.

Sadly, there are all too many politicians who so treasure their shallow sound-bite solutions that they become ruled by a dogma which is not feasible. Their focus is power, and they seek to overpower all who seek to correct them. Some scientists they bribe, and some scientists they bully, and some scientists they ostracize, but, in the end, they don’t stand corrected but instead they fall uncorrected; in which case they fall prey to stupidity.

I saw the stupidity a long, long time ago, when watching very intelligent minds burn out on drugs around Harvard Square in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Back then Harvard and MIT looked for merit in applicants, and the brains being burned out were brilliant. They were different from the brains of a good-hearted but very average lout. Where a lout on drugs merely commented, “Wow, man. Wow,” these youths with IQ’s of 160 flashed like setting suns, and articulated all sorts of amazing ideas, with around three out of every hundred ideas good ones.

Back in those pre-stupidity days there were time-tested ways of debating, and “peer-reviewing”, a brilliant-sounding idea to see if it was a good one. This was done formally in carefully written papers, but also occurred informally among students over drinks. The informal debates could get wonderfully rowdy at times, but the general assumption at that time was that everyone was interested in the same thing: IE: the Truth. It may sound prudish in our age of fraud and corruption, but the idea of intentionally lying was beyond the conception of many. Lying was simply not how the game was played.

I was privileged to be a younger person, eavesdropping on many of these debates. Initially I was a little pitcher with big ears listening to my parent’s generation. Later I became a little squirt listening to the societies of three older siblings. I basically shut up, and just listened. In general I learned far more from such situations than from any class in school.

Besides the topics at hand, I learned there were two sides to any debate. On one hand there was the person who dreamed up a new idea. On the other hand there was the person who tried to shoot it down in flames.

I tended to side with the dreamer. Some ideas were sound, such as the idea continents drifted, while others were not so sound, such as the idea you could invent a “dark light” which would direct a beam of darkness in the manner a flashlight directs a beam of light. But soundness didn’t matter to me. I liked the inspiration, the “high” of dreaming.

I didn’t like the “down” of skeptics, disbelievers who used cold facts to turn happy, buoyant balloons into blazing Hindenburgs crashing in disaster. To be a “down” seemed rude to me; it was far more polite to be a “high”. I did not like disagreeable people and preferred agreeable people.

Of course, Truth doesn’t care if you agree or disagree with It. Truth remains true even if the entire world denies it. And here’s the most mysterious thing: While people say, “Truth hurts”, in actual fact Truth is the most agreeable of all agreeable things. (However, you’ll have to trust me on this, for now.)

People say, “Truth hurts”, predominantly because their pride is wounded when their “high” is shot from the sky and becomes a “Hindenburg.” One moment they feel like a genius, and the next they feel like a fool and a laughingstock, “in error.” When egos are wounded in this manner, especially among young college students who are drinking or drugged, the subject can be dragged down from the pinnacles of Truth to the swamps of ill will and vengeance, all because of “hurt feelings”. Vanity leads people astray.

One knew they were completely astray when “hurt feelings” became the focus. Debates forgot the Truth, and instead became about who could make the other guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of being a fool and a laughingstock. “In error.”

That happened to be what I usually was, as the youngest person in the room, more often than not. `Even the most stupid-seeming laughingstock in a debate could wheel upon me, should I laugh at their discomfiture, and snarl, “What are you laughing at, pea-brain?” And what could I say? The Truth was I was likely five to ten years younger than they, (for example aged fifteen when they were twenty-five), and in Truth I was a pea-brain, compared to them.

It was in some ways an unenviable position to be in, but in another it was a great blessing. It was a curse because “my feelings were hurt” and I could waste a lot of time licking the wounds of self-pity, but it was a blessing because being at the very bottom of the pecking order, a scapegoat even scapegoats could scape, made me aware how stupid the whole process was. It was a sort of blame game that wasted time and made no sense.

It would have been nice if, at that point, some wise adult had stepped in and stated, “It is wrong for them to treat you as an object of ridicule. They should treat you as a young mind, eager to learn, and as a potential protégé.” But of course, that didn’t happen. Instead I was repelled from the college-minded, into the travail of what I suppose you could call The School Of Hard Knocks, but what also might be called The School Of The Most Blessed, for in some ways I skipped a lot of the bother of the blame game.

How it happened is hard to say. I really can’t explain it, except to say Truth is the most agreeable of all agreeable things.

Someone told me, around thirty-seven years ago, something like, “When you point at others, three of your fingers are pointing back at you.” Someone else ruthlessly stated, around thirty-six years ago, “You are just blaming the world for being about to suffer an environmental collapse, because, if the world ends, it excuses you from having to get a Real Job”. Lastly, someone I respected greatly said, for the tenth time, around thirty-six years ago, simply, but with impressive authority and strength, “Don’t blame.”

I’m not sure why, but shifting away from blame brought a greater clarity to my thought. Rather than squealing about whether “my side” or “the other side” was “to blame”, I felt more able to focus on what the problem actually was.

I then noticed something odd. Often it is the people “to blame” who come up with solutions to problems, rather than the people who do all the blaming.

It seemed, for example, that the people who built power plants were more familiar with how power plants work, and therefore were better equipped to engineer improvements. Meanwhile, the people who merely blamed, squawking, “Your smoke is pollution!” never really lifted a finger. Blaming was not what created smoke-stack-scrubbers; the solution came through focusing on what the problem actually was.

Ask yourself, “Do I focus on what the problem actually is, or politics?”

When I was especially young, more than fifty years ago, to focus-on-what-a-problem-actually-was turned out to be difficult for me, as I was prone to running away from problems.

This escapism actually is a bit humorous to look back upon. In my youth a rock group called “The Jefferson Airplane” changed its name to “Jefferson Starship”, because they also wanted to run away. They planned to hijack NASA’s first interplanetary spacecraft, and head off into the void with poets and musicians and….um….mechanics and engineers. (I think they added “mechanics and engineers” because, even in their LSD-addled ambitions, someone understood the spacecraft they hijacked might develop engine problems, and at that point a poet would be of little use. You might need someone who could focus on what the problem actually was, and who could fix it.)

I think some of those Baby-boomers either took too much LSD, or never grew up, but they never got the memo about the importance of mechanics and engineers. And now they are old fossils in the “Swamp”, utterly engrossed in hijacking a different starship, (namely the United States), even though they haven’t got a clue how to run the thing, should they ever gain complete control. They are lost in some strange dream where, should they gain control, “mechanics and engineers” will magically appear and be servants who will do whatever they command, even if what they command is physically impossible.

You should notice I was careful to add the word “physically”. Some amazing things are spiritually possible, which are not taught at institutes of technology. For example, Jesus demonstrated it is possible to walk on water, and Saint Peter demonstrated he could follow, (albeit somewhat clumsily). Does this mean we should sink all our shipping, because such a physical dependence on ships is holding us back, spiritually?

I think not, for thousands of ships have sunk over the centuries, and you hardly ever hear of even a single passenger being freed from their dependence on lifeboats to such a degree that they could stroll blithely across the waves to safety on shore. In fact people usually drown.

In like manner, perhaps we ought not sink the “ship” of fossil fuels, so smugly certain freedom from such dependence will allow us to “walk on water” and create a life free of pollution. What the actual result may be is: Many people will drown.

Unfortunately, the smugly-certain lack such pragmatism. They tend to see in political terms, and envision Caesar crossing the Rubicon and burning all the bridges behind him. (As soon as Caesar crossed that river he was under the death penalty, as were all his troops. The Rubicon truly was “a point of no return”. There was no going back.) It was a daring step from safety to danger, and won Julius the crown.

All the stuff modern Rubicon-crossers are smugly-certain about is myopically focused upon power; they want to be “dictators for life” like Caesar became, forgetful of how Caesar died, daggered to death in the very hallways of power he lusted to abide in.

The people lusting for power now are ignoring fundamental realities, in their eagerness to control. In their desire to forbid fossil fuels (which allow liberty) they instead lust to make all electric (which controls all with the leashes of power lines and cords). To achieve this end they ask for the impossible from the “mechanics and engineers” whom they deem mere servants, mere peons who must do what they command. (But who can’t.)

The powerful are asking for the impossible, and, when reality hits home, the powerful are likely to face the wrath of a starved and frozen populace whom they, as powerful leaders, failed to serve and to protect. Then they, who were so swift to blame fossil fuels, (and to also blame any who said fossil fuels might have advantages), are liable to see an avalanche of blame come crashing back upon them. Some call this “rebounding Karma”. I call it the blame game.

The saddest example of such “rebounding Karma” I’ve learned of is the Christmas present the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu received in 1989. The poor fellow was so clueless about the rage he had created that rather than Christmas carols he sung communist anthems as he was marched to the wall and turned to face the firing squad.

To be honest, what the Swamp has set out to accomplish looks to me like it is worse than a detour. If it was a detour it would eventually get back to the right route, but the Swamp’s plots look like what the self-described “genius” Wile E. Coyote is known for: Inevitable Disaster.

Such cartoons get tiresome after too many episodes; one wearies of anvils always falling upon Wile’s genius. One yearns to just get down to earth, and down to business, and face what the problems actually are.

In the American Southwest one major problem is drought, for the area is basically a desert. Therefore the primary solution (get it?) for watering crops is not rain, but is irrigation, practiced even by the ancient, indigenous populations. The first hints of agricultural habitation exist 2000 years BCE, and the importance of digging canals to irrigate crops was apparent to inhabitants even before the culture described as the Hohokan appeared around 200 BE.

The Hohokan deserve an encyclopedia, as a people, and a remnant may still exist today as modern tribes, but they suffered a crash around the year 1350 for reasons that likely involve climate change, but likely also involved some failure of their leadership.

Such ups and downs are inevitable when a civilization such as theirs exists five times as long as the United States has existed.

Just as we had our Great Depression, the Hohokan had their mysterious equivalents, more than once. For example: A sort of capital city archeologists dub “Snaketown” was abandoned (with some buildings burned), even as the rest of the land prospered, around 1100 CE, and we know next to nothing of why. (I like to think some leaders got too smugly certain.) Over two centuries later a more recent downturn of their fortunes likely involved not drought, but flooding rains, which dug deep gullies which put the water levels of their rivers below the inlets to their vast system of irrigation. Faced with a massive engineering challenge, it seems likely that most of the people instead chose to migrate elsewhere.

Far more could be said; I only broach the topic of these past people to stress two things. First, the ups and downs of these people had nothing to do with white Europeans (at least before 1500), and second, floods, as well as droughts, were a reality that challenged them.

The situation in Phoenix today is not really all that different from what the Hohokan culture faced at its peak. A so-called “overpopulation” thrived/thrives in a desert that seemed incapable of feeding so many, but the genius of the society allowed/allows the people to live good lives. Just as the Hohokan households held shells from distant seashores and jewels from distant mountains, modern Pheonix holds much that isn’t created locally, but is brought in by trade from places far away. Likewise, just as Hohokan culture suffered a downfall when its irrigation systems were not adequately maintained, the millions of people now happy in Phoenix could suffer, if our modern systems are not adequately maintained.

I hope you can see where I am going with this. What is important is to-focus-on-what-the-problem-actually-is, and not on some irrelevant topic. The problem is not whether one race owes another race because of “blame”, or whether driving a car that runs on fossil fuel is to “blame” for both droughts and floods. That stuff is just the blame game. The real problems are more down to earth: How are we handling the gift we are given, called water.

I am no expert on water management, but I do feel I should try to be an educated voter. In pursuit of such education I should be able to turn to the media to be fed the news, but we all shake our heads over what has become of our media. The media has basically become screaming meemies. Like an alcoholic in need of a drink, they see worms crawling from the woodwork and are reduced to hysteria by the slightest drought or slightest flood. Not helpful. So I have to do research on my own.

The irrigation systems devised by modern engineers are amazing, and contain more variables than most consider. Irrigation doesn’t merely involve impounding water behind dams, which can be allowed to flow downhill by turning a faucet. Such a simple system would be a win-win, for it would involve both irrigating crops (and people), and also generating electricity. However in fact the system also involves pumping water uphill, before it flows downhill in the aqueducts, and all the pumping uses amazing amounts of electricity. In fact the water pumps of Arizona’s aqueducts use more electricity than any other consumer. In other words, the flow of water both produces, and consumes, electricity. Therefore, the people managing the flow of water need to be knowledgeable about how much money turning on the faucet is making, compared to how much it is costing. The situation is not so simple as it initially may seem.

Another variable is how dry or rainy it has been. When it is dry, the demand for water grows, even if it is costly to pump water uphill. But if it rains the water is not needed, and there is not such a need for the expense. The supply and demand go through amazing swings.

A totally unforeseen variable, when the dams were first built, were that the lakes of impounded water would become a significant tourism industry involving people who like to boat, fish, swim, water-ski or simply sit in the sun on a small houseboat. Such people have their own economic power, and have their say about whether their marinas will have enough water to float boats or not.

Lastly, there is only so much water to go around during dry times, and this causes states and nations to quibble about who gets how much, and cooler heads must avoid war by writing treaties that decree who gets how much. Even if your state needs water, you must sometimes begrudgingly release a certain amount to flow from your dams downstream to other states, if the treaty says so.

But this diplomacy gets stood on its head when there is too much water. Then you can get in trouble if you are “generous” and allow too much to flow downstream, for you are then to “blame” for downstream flooding. Again, supply and demand has swung about dramatically.

In the past two years we have seen the wailing of Alarmists shift from freaking-out about a mega-drought to the recent concerns about a mega-flood which might have occurred due to Hurricane Hilary. What I want to stress is that such hysteria accomplishes nothing if it blames “Global Warming”, (which gets the blame regardless of whether it rains or shines, or whether we manage or mismanage).

I think that, in the end, what matters most is what accomplishes something, which is the current system of dams and aqueducts, turbines and pumps, which has allowed the desert to bloom in the American Southwest. That practical scheme should be the focus. We want the desert to continue to bloom, for the alternative would involve hardship for many millions of people.

Los Angeles is much like Phoenix, in that it is a so-called overpopulation thriving in a desert that seemingly should not be able to support so many. In terms of local rainfall and snow-melt, Los Angeles should only be able to support 300,000 people, and the fact that, including its suburbs, it now supports 13,000,000 suggests two things. 1.) Some amazing engineering was done, and 2.) if that engineering is not maintained, 12,700,000 people will swiftly find themselves in dire circumstances. It is therefore important to be pragmatic, and not off in some dream-world where the fact walking-on-water is a spiritual possibility becomes an accepted physical reality.

Los Angeles’ growth involved, as often is the case with big cities, water being imported from distant farmlands, which often angers the distant farmers. Even in the suburbs of Boston, as a boy, I heard grumblings from old-timers about how the Boston Big-shots “stole” water-rights from small towns, and that grumbling was occurring in the far greener and rainier landscape of New England.

In California the way water was removed from Owen Valley involved some brutal power politics, and destroyed a landscape once described as “America’s Switzerland.” Owen Lake, once fifty feet deep after heavy rains, became an arid flatland with choking dust-storms of alkaline poisons. Were it not for some artesian springs that fed a few remaining marshes, an important flyway for many species of migratory birds would have been completely wiped out. When Los Angeles began to pump out even Owen Valley’s ground water, and even the artesian wells began drying up, the howl of conservationists finally created enough push-back to halt the myopia of a civic Los Angeles leadership which was fundamentally selfish and greedy, more interested in making money through growth than in facing the problems inherent in growth.

Some of the problems should have been obvious early on, when the conflict erupted in “water wars”, with angry farmers actually dynamiting aqueducts. There were also angry businesses that made money extracting alkaline chemicals from Lake Owen’s water, who sued Los Angeles as the lake dried up. The fact water vanished drove one small business to build a new plant (using a new process) right onto the dried lake-bed, but then that business needed to sue Los Angeles yet again because, in a period of heavy rains in the late 1930’s, the balance of supply and demand swung so violently from drought to flood that those in charge of the aqueducts abruptly had to dump water down into the bone dry lake, flooding the new factory.

California is interesting, for diverse interests sought water, and all the quibbling actually did result in some serious thinking by smarter people, who sought to balance the thirst of migrating birds with the thirst of farmers and thirst of small businesses, and also with the thirst of those who wanted to see Los Angeles grow.

An important factor is that, without water, much of the land is worthless. Some land may support orange and almond groves, but beyond 300,000 people, there could be no suburbs. However, with water, that same land, bought very cheaply, could be sold at a huge profit. And once profits become huge, an insanity called “greed” appears.

California is even more fascinating when one stands back, and watches the mania of greed operate through its history.

Greed was there in the first gold rush, when men flocked into the hills to such a degree that boats docking in San Francisco lost their entire crews and could not depart. Greed was there in the Water Wars, that allowed Los Angeles’ population to explode and made real estate sellers into moguls. It was there when small-town men and women abruptly became idolized Hollywood stars. And it was there when intellectual geeks fooling about with computer hardware and software abruptly became the world’s richest men. Very few of these rags-to-riches stories involved slow and patient growth, nor the careful balancing of multifarious interests. Instead it tended to be a great, big, all-American, “Yippie!”

Now you are probably going to ask me to define “Yippie.” Sigh.

I sigh because, when you get all spiritual about things, greed is not usually a good thing. Occasionally love can cause greed to be greedy about others experiencing mercy and kindness, but more often greed is all about me, or “my side”, (which plays into the blame game.) Greed wants to skim the cream and leave others the milk, or even to steal the water and leave others the dust.

Greed tends to start small and then grow like a cancer. The simple grift of a carnival barker becomes the majestic graft of a state senator. It grows because greed can never satisfy the human heart, which wants to give and forgive. In fact the greater greed grows the greater the hunger of the heart gets, which makes greed want even more. (This is why you so often see crooked people, who could have gotten away with their petty crimes, instead overdo their robberies until they are so flagrant not even the most indulgent authorities can overlook them.) Greed is a sort of vicious cycle and becomes the author of its own demise. Eventually one can own the whole world but is reduced to a King Midas, weeping because he has transformed his favorite daughter into heavy metal.

Yet in a strange way this ugly, dog-like habit of greed is part of the American “Yippie”. It is a confession that part of being free is to be human, and part of being human is to be greedy. Liberty allows us to want what we want. We crave what we crave. We desire what we desire. However, (and this is very important), we also know such greediness can be rebuked. Part of the American “Yippee” is the knowledge we can be smacked on the nose like a bad dog by a rolled-up newspaper. It doesn’t matter who you are. You could be King George of England. The American “Yippee” will smack you. Even newspapers get smacked by a newspaper.

Europeans, who seem by and large more obedient than “Yippee” Americans, have every right to criticize Americans for being both greedy and rebellious, (which is likely why their souls were born in Europe). If you are born in America your soul is wild and free and yet fully expects to get smacked in the nose by a newspaper. And the reason is stamped into the very coins our greed likes to finger, as the motto, “In God we trust.”

What this suggests is that, hand in hand with deplorable selfishness, the American “Yippee” believes in Something higher and better, which will not leave a hole in the heart like greed does, but rather warms and fills the heart with giving and forgiveness. It may seem like an impossible contradiction, but it is what it is.

It may also seem ambiguous, but few people are more generous than greedy Americans are. If our prosperity is due to greed, why did we give so much of it away? If we were truly greedy we would just keep it for ourselves. Instead we have given not merely money, but our lives, to help others.

Of course, greedy grifters do tend to skim the cream from a charity. The graft starts out small, as a line-item called “administrative expenses”, and grows to the unholy insult to charity the Clintons enacted, when millions in donations to help out after the Haitian earthquake built an absurd, single, lone house in Haiti, as the Clintons kept all the rest of the money for themselves, (uttering the amazing hypocrisy that they, the Clintons, could be trusted with the money more than Haitian leaders, because the Haitians were corrupt.)

Outsiders wonder why Americans don’t rise in wrath. The simple fact of the matter is that Americans did; Americans have an intuitive understanding of greed, and how it grows grotesque, and of how it is healed by giving and forgiving. In any case, when Hillary Clinton ran for president, the election was “rigged” so she would win, but the overwhelming disgust Americans felt towards her greed outnumbered the fraudulent ballots, and, against all odds, Trump appeared.

At this point we can return to what actually matters, for Trump was a hard-nosed businessman who knew the ropes. He dealt with what actually matters. In terms of the American Southwest, what actually matters is dams that hold waters for droughts, canals that move waters from supplies to demands, and contingency plans involving what to do when times of drought give way to times of flood. The proper management of this infrastructure is crucial to the comfort and perhaps survival of around 75 million people. We are not in the moccasins of the Hohokan, who could just migrate somewhere else (likely down to Mexico) when their infrastructure crashed. We are in a situation we should take very seriously. And blaming light bulbs for Global Warming is not a very serious thing to do.

One thing I liked about Trump, in those long ago days when he ruled, was that he simply stated Global Warming was not worth our attention. He was correct. The infrastructure is worth out attention, and, in the case of California, the irrigation system is a hundred years old in places. Cement gets crumbly after that long; the wiring of pumps and turbines ages and metal fatigues, maintenance is a requirement which millions of people are dependent upon.

This past year has seen the weather of the west go through one of its typical swings from one extreme to another. A very dry time was followed by a very wet time. Massive Pacific gales dug far south of their usual abode up in the Aleutian Islands, directing a stream of moisture directly at California, and filling rivers with flood waters even as mountains all the way to Utah saw especially deep snows.

This should have embarrassed the media, which had been stating “Global Warming” was creating a “Mega-drought”, because rather than a drought there was a flood, and the flood would continue when all the snow melted in the spring.

In actual fact the Alarmist media then did what it accuses everyone else of doing; it went into denial. It insisted the rains were just a brief, upward blip in the downward graph of a terrible drought. Authoritative maps were produced, showing areas experiencing floods were still painted red, indicating drought. This became absurd. By last July twelve maps had been produced by various “authorities” showing all sorts of varying scenarios, with some maps showing drought in the same places other maps showed flood.

Apparently there were differing definitions of “drought”. (To resort to hyperbole, what is not a drought for a farmer growing cactus is a drought for a farmer growing watercress.) But the media chose the maps with the most red, as they had their propaganda to crank out, their narrative to reinforce, and their balderdash to support, to earn their pay. They were bought and paid for, and were handed the news they were to report, investigating nothing while pretending to be “investigative”. Meanwhile mechanics and engineers had to tend to reality; the infrastructure.

The infrastructure was stressed, just as it was in the time of the Hohokan, and in places levees failed and aqueducts crumbled. Owen Lake reappeared, as did Tulare Lake on the far side of the mountains.

The reappearance of Owen Lake had some benefits in terms of settling the clouds of alkaline dust, and watering migratory flyways for birds, but repairs to the aqueduct became more urgent, to supply Los Angeles with water. Meanwhile the reappearance of Tulare Lake had a very different effect, as rather than alkaline dust it’s lake-bed was excellent soil, and had become excellent farmland. When the lake reappeared the farmland was flooded and crops were lost.

California’s farmland is a blessing to the rest of the nation, for in places a 300-day growing season allows California (along with Arizona and Florida) to produce fresh vegetables when the rest of the nation is buried in snow. People who scorn California’s politics and state the rest of the nation would be better off without California are not thinking clearly about their food budgets. To lose vast acreages to floods has consequences. The mechanics and engineers in charge of how much flow is held back in dams wanted to hold as much as possible back to reduce river levels, and thus reduce the regrowth of Lake Tulare, yet at the same time they looked nervously at the deep snow in the mountains. Had nature been mischievous, a single warm rainstorm could have unleashed an amount impossible to contain.

A worst case scenario was possible to visualize because early in its history California was hit by a tremendous, once-every-500-year combination of rain, snow and snow-melt which very nearly ruined the entire state. Nearly the entire Central Valley became an enormous lake. The government had to be moved from Sacramento.

It is possible to map the flooded areas using old reports

And mechanics and engineers dub a repetition of such weather an “ARkStorm” and map how modern engineering might handle a similar fiasco.

So you can see that highly qualified mechanics and engineers are quite aware they can fail, and flood waters can be ten to twenty feet deep in the Central Valley. This is because they are not given enough money to prepare for once-every-500-year events. It’ too expensive. So negotiations tend to pare back the costs, until they are only preparing for once-every-100-year events. But they still are aware of how such preparations may prove inadequate, and think about what their responses should be when the s— hits the fan and the levees are not tall enough and Lake Tulare reappears. They have “contingency plans”, which are basically how to make the pain less when the s— hits the fan. Practical stuff.

Now please compare this with the demented response of the media, last winter, when Lake Tulare reappeared. It was not the slightest bit practical, yet they got paid well to produce pure pulp.

First, the media can never resist using the word “unprecedented”. This is just plain stupid. I have just shown you the precedent. Even if I couldn’t find the precedent on my computer, I could turn to my nine-year-old granddaughter and she’d find it. The California history regarding the terrible floods from November 1861 to March 1862 is right there in plain sight, at your fingertips. They even involve episodes of our national history having little to do with meteorology; IE: How did the Confederate forces escape the superior Union forces in Arizona? (Answer: The rivers were flooding and blocked the advance of armies.) The evidence of a far more severe flood are everywhere you look, and this proves the media does not look, when they use the word “unprecedented”.

When one looks at the flooding of Lake Tulare that actually occurred last winter and spring, and one compares it to 1862, it is obvious last winter and spring were small potatoes, compared to a worst-case scenario. It could have been much, much worse, if the mountain snows had melted faster, but the fact is: It wasn’t worse. So how in the world can the press call the event, “unprecedented”?

Obviously the press does not care if it is accurate. The press does not care about the Truth. So, what does the press care about? Greed. For greed it grovels. It grovels to get its next paycheck, which it can only get if it obeys a master who thinks lying to the public is good policy. Good policy? Apparently. Apparently it is good policy to make the public afraid. It is good policy to whip up anxiety about the weather. It is good policy to state the current weather is a sign that Global Warming is about to end life as we know it. But current weather isn’t going to do that. Far worse has been seen before. And it didn’t end life as we know it.

Besides ignoring the history which one needs to research, the press ignores the history it itself made. After all, it was the press that stated, in November, that the mega-drought was going to last. It was the press that stated that the mega-drought proved that Global Warming resulted in unprecedented weather. This wasn’t ancient history. It was recent. But now they abruptly forgot their own history and stated that it was the flooding which was going to last, and to prove that Global Warming resulted in unprecedented weather.

The press seems to think the public is amazingly gullible, and that they can “cry wolf” on and on and on, and the public will never become jaded. They have forgotten the fable. In the fable, the mischievous shepherd boy arrives at a day when a wolf actually appears, and the boy cries, “Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!” but everyone is so jaded that that no one comes to his rescue. In the case of the modern mainstream media, “rescue” is the paychecks reporters receive each week, but such “rescue” can cease. The media have lost so many viewers with their dishonest hyperbole that their parent entities can’t afford them, and the reporters get laid off.

So far, news reporters haven’t learned their lesson. In fact they are doubling down, and are worse than ever. I have the sense they feel their power slipping away, and are desperately trying to bring things to a head, wherein acceptance of Global Warming (AKA Climate Change) is a prerequisite to being listened-to. If you don’t tow the line, thou shalt receive no funding. Thou shalt receive no publicity. Thou shalt be marginalized and ostracized and lonely as heck.

Oddly, this strategy is backfiring. Who receives no publicity? Increasingly it is the press itself. Who receives no funding? Who increasingly is lonely as heck?

What people seem to be interested in is: What is actually happening. To some degree there seems to be a bit of the mechanic and the engineer in the ordinary thought of ordinary people.

Of course, just as ordinary people are ambiguous in terms of greed and the rolled-up newspaper that smacks greed on the snout, the pragmatic side of ordinary thinking, which is like an engineer, must also deal with the “Karen’s”, who are not all that interested in what is actually happening. The “Karen’s” love to murmur and gossip, backbite and belittle, and in some cases badly hurt innocent people. (Likely this is why scriptures startle some people by, when defining certain behavior as “un-spiritual”, listing “gossip” right next to “murder”.) However, perhaps the hook of behaving like a Karen is a desire to learn the Truth, (even as it spreads a lie.) In the end, people seem interested in what is actually happening.

What was actually happening in the American Southwest was that a dry time was shifting to a wet time. But how long would the wet time last? It was obvious rivers would run high, as the tremendous snowpack in the mountains melted, but what to do with those waters as they ran, and what to do if the drought returned?

I think this is what we would be discussing, if we were a sane society with a sane media. And some people were sane, and actually dealing with the issues.

I was very curious about why they decided what they decided, because I am one of those people who ignores what the media blares, because they have violated my trust. Instead I look, when possible, to what reporters would look at, if they were something other than paid parrots.

At this point the general public can still access, to an amazing degree, the water levels of scores of reservoirs, and the flow rates of many rivers, and the level of snowpack in the mountains. (Those-in-charge haven’t yet shut such sources down, the way they closed down most ways an ordinary person could examine arctic sea-ice.) Therefore, without newspapers, one can see the situation in the Southwest for oneself.

The two largest reservoirs along the Colorado River are Lake Mead and, upstream, Lake Powell. Lake Mead was getting all the attention a year ago, as its levels sank so low sunk boats and mob-related corpses were exposed. The generation of electricity was curtailed. However, since then the levels have risen dramatically.

Lake Powell also showed a great recovery, as snowmelt poured into it last spring, but has dipped slightly more recently as some of its waters were released to Lake Mead.

Upstream of Lake Powell the 34 larger “tracked reservoirs” also recovered from low levels to what averaged out to nearly 90 % of capacity. In a few cases reservoirs were over 100% of capacity, which is not a good thing, for it demonstrates the reservoir has become useless in terms of flood control. Most never reached 100%, and the torrents released by spring melting were well handled.

The actual handling of the waters occurs below the radar of the mainstream media, which is only interested in the panic porn of sensationalism. However, there are true public servants working behind the scenes. As an outsider, some of the things they need to consider are puzzling.

For example, when the water had just started to rise in Lake Powell its floodgates were abruptly opened wide, to such an extent that its levels actually dropped. It was a five day event.

It took between two to three days for the torrents to flow down to Lake Mead, and then resulted in a very rapid rise in the levels of Lake Mead, for five days.

What was that all about? Rather than seek the mainstream media, it paid to seek the more local papers. The general public along the Colorado River needed to be warned the river was going to flood for five days. It would not hurt tourism, for it was during the off-season. But, as the flood was man-made, insignificant but curious local reporters asked the questions the mainstream doesn’t, and received an interesting answer.

Apparently, when a river moves around a bend, it erodes and scours deep channels to the outside of the curve, yet builds sandy, shallow beaches on the inside of the curve. These beaches were delightful places to stop, as people floated down the Colorado through the majesty of the Grand Canyon, but drought and low water caused the beaches to be degraded. The theory was that a flood would rebuild them. I never heard how the theory worked out. But it was interesting to read that someone decided a good flushing would do good, and could build as well as erode.

Another interesting disparity involved the treaties which require reservoirs to, in times of drought, release water for people downstream to use. Lake Powell easily achieved its quota, and currently has released more than 112% of the required amount. Yet Lake Mead has failed to meet the requirement, and currently has released just over 83% of the required amount. I assume this demonstrates how wet the year has been, and that rather than drought, flooding has been a concern downstream.

Downstream from Lake Mead are two large reservoirs, Mohave Lake and Lake Havasu. Lake Mead’s discharges keeps the level of these reservoirs fairly stable for irrigation purposes, while at the same time these two reservoirs stabilize the flow of the Colorado River, which otherwise would fluctuate wildly, because the demand for electricity varies hugely. If Lake Mead must release a set amount, they would not be prone to do it in a steady way. They would be prone to release lots all at once, when demand is high, and to release little when demand is low, which would make the Colorado flow in erratic pulses, but the downstream reservoirs smooth the flow out.

At Lake Havasu the waters of the Colorado are divvied up between the interested parties. 365 billion gallons a year head off to Los Angeles and San Diego via the Colorado Aqueduct, 488 billion gallons flow to Pheonix and Tuscon via Arizona’s Aqueducts, and the remaining 488 billion gallons flow to Mexican aqueducts, which leave not a drop to flow to the sea. Men have been so efficient that not a drop is squandered. A riverbed which once saw over a trillion gallons of water flow by becomes bone dry.

The same efficiency can have the bed of the Gila River bone dry, where it enters the Colorado at Yuma, south of Lake Havasu. Originally the Gila ran so deep that paddlewheel steamers ran between Yuma and Pheonix, but now all that water is used for crop irrigation and drinking water, golf courses and swimming pools and whatever men desire, upstream.

Before modern people say rude things about the mentality of people of the past, one needs to understand these past people were doing things on a scale never seen before, and were naive concerning consequences. They were simply doing what people had always done, but doing it better. The Hohokan had irrigated their crops for two thousand years; they just never did such a good job that they stopped the Colorado River, and the Gila River as well. Nor were modern consequences immediately obvious: The populations (and therefore thirst) of Los Angeles and Pheonix were much smaller when the projects began, and some projects, such as water for Tuscon, were not even completed until 1970.

Simply planning the construction of Hoover Dam took nine years, beginning in 1922 when Hoover was Secretary of Commerce. Construction began in 1931 when Hoover was president, and was completed in 1936 when FDR was president, and FDR saw to it Hoover’s name was removed. (A bit ungracious? But an example of the petty politics involved.) Only after FDR was dead was “Boulder Dam” called “Hoover Dam” again. Hoover lived to see his vindication, dying in 1964.)

It would be a glorious sidetrack to plunge deeply into the history of the dam builders, but what is important here is that the project was gigantic and straddled the desperation of the Great Depression. Even before the project began thousands of unemployed workers had shown up, with their families, in a desert where temperatures exceeded 110 degrees, that had no housing. Workers were dying of heat stroke even before the first worker was hired. Thoughts about native species of fish such as the “Boney Tailed Chub” and the “Razor Backed Sucker” were not on people’s minds. Nor was the nation of Mexico, at first.

However, you cannot just dry up a major system of rivers without suffering environmental consequences. People began to understand there was a price to be paid downstream for efficiency upstream. Plants and wildlife and fish and birds all suffered, as did people depending on them, when the Colorado stopped flowing. When the population of fish in the Sea of Cortez south of the Colorado River Delta crashed, dawn broke on Marblehead. Mexicans began to do calculations on the back of envelopes. They wondered if the protein they gained through irrigation matched the protein they lost through a decreased catch of fish.

It is important to remember our modern environmental awareness came from elders who learned things the hard way. For example, the United State’s EPA was not created until a river was so polluted it caught on fire in 1969. In like manner, the concept of “wetlands” being important simply didn’t enter ordinary thinking, a century ago. People saw a marsh as a stinking place of no value. They had no idea smelly places fed so many baby fish, which fed the bigger fish.

Becoming aware of unforeseen consequences is no reason to glue yourself to a highway, or enact some other overreaction too often seen in the antics of radical environmentalists. More moderate conservationists often propose solutions that don’t involve dynamiting Hoover Dam, and in some ways Mexico has been a better example of such sanity than the United States.

Rather than just blaming the United States for using water upstream, some Mexicans faced the fact that their politicians had fought to get 488 billion gallons of Colorado River water delivered across the border, and, if none of that water reached the delta, Mexico deserved some “blame.”

At this point some Mexicans wondered, “Couldn’t we allow just a little to flow down the parched riverbed to the sea, as an experiment?” The experiment was done, largely using wastewater from irrigation ditches, and, even with such cruddy water, the scientists taking measurements were amazed at the positive results, which allowing even a little water to flow down to the Sea of Cortez, achieved. When paired with tree-planting along the scorched banks of the river, barren stretches of land became verdant. Fish populations rebounded.

What is important about this experiment is that the blame game was avoided. Rather than pitting the desires of farmers against the desires of fishermen, the desires of both were met. It was a case of having your cake and eating it too; (IE: Impossible, in the eyes of some radicals.)

It should be noted that to the north conservationists, concerned about the decreasing populations of fish native to the Colorado River, (especially the “Boney Tailed Chub” and the “Razor Backed Sucker”), discovered they did not need to blow up Hoover Dam. Instead, the level of Lake Mohave began to be dropped and raised ten feet, each autumn, simply to help these obscure fish. We humans can behave sanely, if we work at it.

I bring this up because it demonstrates how, quietly and behind the scenes, sensible people tweak the system, even in a time of drought, to make it more productive. It is counter-intuitive to think that, in a time of drought, allowing any water to escape the “efficiency” of the upstream system would be a good thing, yet the level of Lake Mohave was lowered and water was allowed to escape irrigation and flow down the dry Colorado to the sea, and the benefits were, if not immediately obvious, obvious enough to vindicate the daring thinkers who dared challenge the “efficient”.

The simple fact of the matter is that the marshes and wetlands of a delta are swarming with life and feed the nearby fish to a degree where there is a population explosion, if the dry Colorado Delta is allowed to again be wet. An increase in the catch of fish becomes an economic fact practical people notice. Making money with fish must be weighed with making money with irrigation. And this can lead to further thought, such as “Can we irrigate without the Colorado?” Which in turn has Mexicans considering something perhaps California should consider: The economic feasibility of desalinization plants.

Desalinization is a topic one needs to keep abreast upon. Back when I originally researched the topic in 1970 it was not feasible except in extreme cases, such as on desert islands where it almost never rains, or ships at sea for long periods of time. But that is fifty years ago, and a lot has been learned, especially in very arid Arab lands, where they had lots of oil money to pour into research, or in Israel, where their very survival depended on water. The US Navy has also researched the subject. Both the subjects of distilling and osmosis have evolved to a degree where desalinization is only a tenth as expensive as it once was. To be an old hippy who researched the subject in 1970, and who therefore thinks they know all about it, is to be a fool.

Unfortunately, there is a certain mindset which made up its mind in 1969, concerning environmental issues, and hasn’t grown. (This failure to grow may well be an insidious side effect of seemingly harmless “recreational” drugs.) (People like to say, “There is no sign the drug changed me.” What they fail to see is that you are supposed to change. If Beethoven didn’t change, his ninth symphony would sound the same as his first.)

A more mature mindset sees Desalinization is important for a reason people failed to foresee, in the past. And what is that? It is that the irrigation of deserts has a habit of making soil more and more salty, for there is a little salt in the “fresh” water of the Colorado River, and when that water evaporates the residue of salt is left behind, until the salt in soil can reach a level where it kills the very plants you are attempting to irrigate. In other words, irrigation results in the “salinization” of soil, and flushing the salt from that soil with fresh water makes “desalinization” important, even miles from the sea.

So which mindset talks about blowing up Hoover Dam, and which mindset investigates desalinization? California’s or Mexico’s? Or even, California’s or Arizona’s?

What a joke it would be if Arizona, which doesn’t even have a coastline, invested in desalinization when California didn’t!

If it was Mexico that made choices that led to prosperity, as California made choices that led to poverty, a tide could turn, and people could be seen sneaking across the border in a southerly direction. After all, the grass is always greener….

Actually I’m perfectly fine with Mexico becoming prosperous. I cheer the successes of other people. What bugs me is the failures of my own people. And there is something prone to failure about the obstinate attitude of an American media which can’t budge beyond its fixation on Global Warming.

To me our American problem, to some degree, seems to involve semantics. We lack the words that adequately describe why it is spiritually true that unselfish behavior is far better than selfish behavior. I resort to clumsy images of people going “Yippie” and then getting their snouts whacked with a rolled-up newspaper. Why? Because I lack the words that properly define an important distinction.

For example, consider the word “compromise.” Is it a negative or positive word? I would like to suggest it is very necessary in any negotiations, but that it tends to be burdened by the baggage of selfishness. People tend to see “compromise” as a sort of surrender, but only for a while. It is like a “cease fire” in the heat of battle; it is not a true peace, but just a pause in a fight which will resume at a later date. Maybe you will agree not to blow up Hoover Dam this year, but reducing Hoover Dam to rubble remains on your agenda.

Now consider he word “integration”. Is it a negative or positive word? I would like to suggest it takes opposing parties which apparently are at loggerheads, and instead puts them on the same page. Rather than seeing things in either-or terms, things are seen in terms involving the benefit of all. For example, in Mexico farmers did not need to “compromise” with fishermen, because they both wanted the other to succeed, because they wanted Mexico to succeed. What’s more, they have succeeded (so far).

To conclude this digression, the distinction I am attempting to make would put the word “compromise” on the selfish side as the word “integrate” would be on the unselfish side. And why is this distinction important?

It is because the mentality of communists, globalists, elitists and other dictators and tyrants seem incapable of anything other than the most degrading sort of selfishness. They do not value any view other than their own myopia. They cannot see the value of other views. They are so certain their views are superior that they inevitably fall into the repression of other views, which is a sickness like cancer that always seeks a “final solution” which involves actually killing those who differ. The fishermen must kill the farmers, or the farmers must kill the fishermen. I have even heard some go so far as to suggest it would be a good thing to kill 95% of the earth’s population, because “over population” is “the problem”.

Over population is not the problem. The more the merrier. The more we have the more minds we have working on true solutions to the problems we are faced by. In fact, if you take the time to bother with actually studying history, it is amazing to see the problems mankind has overcome, and amazing to see where the saviors have sprung from. Sadly, however, some think they already know it all, and they can’t be bothered with the elders of our past. They would rather rewrite history to affirm what they think they already know, even if they are dead wrong. Such souls are not mankind’s saviors, but rather mankind’s nemesis.

Such devils actually have little interest in what actually matters, in terms of the infrastructure which millions of lives are dependent upon in the American Southwest. They live in a far-away swamp they think is not low, but a high Elysium of god-like power and privilege. Dams and canals? Fishermen and farmers? Such low-brow considerations are delegated to the riffraff, to those boring mechanics and engineers who do not comprehend the intricacies of Washington power-politics.

Personally, I prefer the low-brow stuff, because in my humble opinions the high-brows make no real sense. Their heads exploded at some point, (perhaps during an LSD trip in 1969), and they are now convinced they are aboard the Jefferson Starship, which they have highjacked and are now confidently steering out into a lifeless void. I prefer more sane brows. So let us look at what is actually happening, in the American Southwest.

After the mountain snows are done melting, (they actually keep melting, but the majority of the snow is melted by late June,) the next best source of water is the so-called “monsoon.” These are summer thunderstorms which vary greatly in their intensity and coverage.

I think the variation reminded some of the variation in India between drought and flood. Because that variation hinges upon the strength of the Asian monsoon, it was assumed our variation must also be a “monsoon”. However our variation is different, and, if you want the honest truth, I think more research is needed, for I think a degree of mystery is involved concerning why it sometimes rains and sometimes doesn’t, in the American Southwest. It involves factors different from Asia’s, which leads some to argue about the definition of “monsoon”.

Pretty pointless, if you ask me. East is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet. If you define monsoon as strictly the situation created by prevailing winds in Asia, our monsoon is not a monsoon. We must invent our own word for some-years-wet-and-some-year-dry. Call it a “monseen” if you insist. But then get down to the business of describing what is actually happening.

And it is here the wonder sets in. For the fact of the matter is that there is still much to be learned and incorporated into our understanding. The science is not settled. There are some excellent theories floating around, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of predicting whether it will rain or be dry, flip a coin.

Here is my layman’s understanding of the American “monseen”.

The Southwest lacks trees in many areas, and bakes under a summer sun that creates temperatures over 110 ( 44 Celsius) at the surface, and that hot air rises, which creates less air at the surface, which is a partial vacuum, so the barometric pressure falls. Nature abhors a vacuum, so air must come from somewhere to replace the air that has risen. Where does this air come from? And is it’s composition the same as the air that was lifted?

At this point you have to start to attend to the “partial pressure” of some air molecules compared to the “partial pressure” of other air molecules. And most important is water. Of course.

It turns out that, to a degree, when molecules of oxygen and nitrogen rise, their space can be taken by molecules of H2O. From where, in a desert? Well, from the surface of Lake Mead and Lake Powell and the 34 reservoirs upstream, of course. Vast amounts of water are available which were not available when the Hohoham scientists tried to figure things out.

But, if those lakes did not exist, the landscape would still be likely to find water, because the easiest route for air to replace the rising air is up the the river valleys. It is far harder to replace the air by pulling it up and over high mountain passes. Therefore, air is sometimes drawn from the humid Gulf of Mexico up the Rio Grande valley, or from the humid Sea of Cortez up the Colorado valley.

But you will notice I said, “sometimes.” On other occasions the air up the river valleys remains bone dry. Despite evaporation from reservoirs and from irrigated farmland, it remains a drought. Any rain that does fall makes long and beautiful purple streamers from the cumulus which fade, falling into the hot and dry air, and never reach the ground.

Although the rain does not reach the ground, the downdrafts associated with the wind do. As a young bum, attempting to write the Great American Novel on a portable typewriter in desert campgrounds, I had to keep an eye on the cumulus, for a calm, mild morning tended to be hit by a blast of wind around lunchtime, and such wind has no respect for piles of typing paper sitting on picnic tables without heavy rocks holding them down. A sign such a downdraft was imminent was the purple streamers appearing on the bottom of clouds.

These streamers, called “virga” by meteorologists, were called a word that meant “lady rain” by the Navajo sheep herders. When the clouds grew especially purple, lightning bolts could travel down the edge of the virga, hitting ground never wet by rain and igniting forest fires. These fires were so much a part of western ecology that some pinecones evolved to only drop their seeds when scorched by forest fires.

When the virga grew thick enough to actually reach the ground the situation could become dramatically different. Rather than “lady rain” it became “manly rain”, which the ranchers called “gully washers”. Dry gulches which had gone years never seeing more than a trickle of water abruptly became raging torrents.

At one campground I frequented I watched, during a 36 month period between 1984 and 1988, a sand dune be slowly extended across a gully by the persistent winds. This worried me, for I imagined the dune-dam might, in some future flash-flood, redirect the gully’s water right through the campground and wash away my tent. But I needn’t have worried. The dune was gone in five minutes, when the raging waters came down that gully.It made me understand the “flash” in flash-flood. The torrent was over in forty-five minutes, yet undid the work of three years of sand-drifting.

Spending so much time outdoors did seem to awake some sort of ability in me to forecast, but it seemed to be more like intuition than any intellectual science I could compile facts and figures about, and could use to produce a paper to be peer reviewed. Also the intuitive talent seemed to involve the immediate future more than the long range. I would never pretend to be able to forecast whether the summer would be droughty or not. The shepherds and ranchers might be willing to speculate, but some felt speculating might “hex” the weather; one might irk the gods if one pretended to understand them.

Meteorologists seem to be on better relations with the angels God charges controlling weather with; (either that or they just get used to being put to shame by the pranks of such “lesser” gods, zephyrs, and tricksters). They do make an effort to understand what makes some so-called “monsoons” wet and others be dry. The dynamics are different from Asia’s monsoons, and as far as I can tell there’s much more work to do before we understand them, and therefore the forecasts are often wrong.

To me there seems a great distinction between those who comprehend the magnitude of the work that needs to be done, and the fools who say “the science is settled” and who blame “Global Warming” for all the variety weather amazes us with.

My own experience with western weather was based upon the fact that, because I wrote nothing I could sell, and also because I found it very hard to write and also hold a job, I needed to find the lowest rent possible, if I intended to write. Cheapest was to sleep in my car, but the extreme discomfort (and the fact it often was illegal) tended to discourage that option except when absolutely necessary. Next cheapest was to sleep at a campground, which in those days only cost $25.00/week. However, I learned firsthand one was unwise to attempt this too early in the spring or too late in the fall. In mid-October one should seek a camper or a $60.00/week motel unit, and hide indoors from Blue Northers and cold and wet weather until mid-May. It was in mid-May that the winter storm track seemed to retreat north. Then the “monsoon” started to develop, with dry “lady rains” at first, and the thundering “manly rains” later. June tended to be hot and dry and July saw the heat build a better chance of gully-washers.

Weather radars were often unhelpful, as they could show rain without indicating whether it was lady or manly. But they did show peculiar systems that I called “ghost-fronts”. Though fronts did not appear on maps, they seemed to be faint remnants of storms that traveled along the winter storm track during the summer, after they pushed south and became extremely weak. At times they formed small hooks of clouds, or even spirals, as they drifted across the desert from the Pacific. Not much rain reached the ground from them, but they did prove that moisture could make it over the mountains. This moisture, basically riding the weakest and southernmost westerlies, met the weakest and northernmost trade winds, basically coming up the Rio Grande from the Gulf of Mexico, which also had to transcend mountain blockage to enter the Colorado Valley. The easiest route was up the Colorado River itself, though neither westerlies nor trade winds tended to go that way. I therefore decided to do a bit of b.s.ing, and proclaimed the south wind was created by the suction caused by so much air rising over the blazing hot deserts. Often there is low pressure just sitting over the Southwest for weeks on end, not due to any storm, but rather because it is so very hot.

A final factor meteorologists, mechanics and engineers need to consider seems unlikely in a desert: It is the remnants of tropical storms.

Atlantic hurricanes can head up the Rio Grande at Brownsville, and Pacific hurricanes can curve north and head up the coast of Baja California or the Sea of Cortez, eventually funneling moisture up the Colorado River valley, and , while these systems are weakened by the time they reach the deserts, they give surprising amounts of rain to areas that usually see little. When you read that blazingly hot desert communities such as Salton Sea or Palm Springs receive average of four inches of rain a year, you need to understand the average is lifted by such events; in fact they usually receive less, but occasionally receive far more.

Such events may be rare, but they are common enough to have a page in Wikipedia devoted to a “List of California Hurricanes”, though in fact it is largely a list of remnants. The very cold waters off California is death to hurricanes, and they fall apart with amazing speed as they approach from the south. Even so, the remnants are something engineers need to be aware of, for history warns us that a sequence of such remnants can afflict the Southwest. For example, in 1939 four occurred in four weeks:

• September 4–7, 1939: The remnants of a hurricane brought over a year’s worth of rain to parts of southern California.
• September 11–12, 1939: The remnants of a hurricane from the Gulf of California brought rain to parts of California.
• September 19–21, 1939: The remnants of a tropical cyclone brought rain to California.
• September 25, 1939: The 1939 tropical storm made landfall n ear Long Beach.  Winds were near 80 km/h (50 mph) and rain was near 12 inches (300 mm). At sea, 48 people were killed. On land, 45 were killed in flooding as an intense thunderstorm immediately preceded the tropical storm. This is the only tropical storm recorded to make landfall in California during the 20th century.

Considering we have such clear records of past events, it would be difficult to call a current event “Unprecedented”. My ten-year-old granddaughter could find the above picture, if my elderly internet abilities were weak. One could even find examples of “close calls”, where massive force five hurricanes threatened California. (Although such hurricanes always weaken greatly as they cross over cold waters, if they crossed quickly enough, a force five hurricane might still retain the strength of a strong force one, or weak force two.)

Such a storm would be truly “unprecedented” in terms of the brief historical record, but there is also a recent geological record which clearly shows such rare events have occurred in the recent past, and therefore meteorologists are always wary of massive hurricanes that blow up in the warm waters south of California ‘s cold waters.

By the way, the storm shown above was Linda, in 1997. In the warm waters south of California it exploded to a power that scared meteorologists, for it had a central pressure down around 26.64 inches (902 mb) and sustained winds of 185 mph. Lord knows how high the gusts were, but the winds were higher than many tornadoes, and even if it weakened and was only half as strong when it hit hit California it would have caused havoc. However it did not follow the path shown on the lower right of the above picture. Rather than slicing right it hooked left, and dwindled to a depression as swiftly as it as it had exploded to a force five hurricane. Despite the fact its core completely missed California, its outer rain bands caused mudslides east of San Diego, and its enormous waves washed away a house and killed a surfer.

Before you laugh at the way the meteorologists worried about Linda, be aware that, even before Linda faded, a new storm, Nora, was spinning up to its south, and Nora did slice right rather than hook left. Nora avoided much of the Cold water off California and used warm water in the Sea of Cortez and, though it did weaken greatly, retained enough strength to come north through Arizona as an actual tropical storm , with tropical force winds. Considering tropical storms need warm oceans to be created and to sustain themselves, to have one over a desert is a bit bizarre, yet Nora was a weirdo. One mountain in southwest Arizona saw a foot of rain, and, considering the landscape is officially “desert” and gets around three to four inches per year, the gully-washers produced by Nora there must have been surreal.

In any case, I only bring these examples up to demonstrate such unusual rainfalls are by no means “unprecedented”. They may be flukes, but they are a reality, and meteorologists deal with such strange realities. One thing they have noticed is such flukes seem to always happen when an El Nino is building in the Pacific.

And guess what? This past summer an El Nino was building in the Pacific. So it seems only natural that meteorologists would keep an eye out for tropical storms that might effect the desert Southwest. Even an amateur like myself did. But the media? It was still pounding its flabby drum and promoting panic about mega-drought, or maybe it was mega-floods, but in any case was mega-something.

Enter a tropical wave from stage right. Even before it crossed Mexico one of my favorite hurricane forecasters, Joe Bastardi, casually mentioned this wave might become a storm like Nora in 1997.

Bastardi is a peculiar mix of bombast and humbleness, and he can’t figure himself out, so I don’t try. I just am amazed by his insights. For example, one time a tropical wave was just coming off Africa and he published, “Houston, we have a problem.” Roughly ten days later that wave was a hurricane (Rita?) hitting Houston, but rather than gloating Bastardi was berating himself because he missed some detail and the storm’s landfall was the wrong side of Houston. Or, for another example, another hurricane carved from the gulf across the American southeast, weakening to a tropical storm, and was heading out to sea off Cape Hattaras, where 99% of all hurricanes head for Europe, but Bastardi said this storm was different. He said it would loop a clockwise loop and hit Florida and enter the Gulf of Mexico and then perhaps hit New Orleans. Initially such a zany forecast seemed preposterous, but that is exactly what this storm (Ivan?) did. But Bastardi did not give himself time to gloat over such an unbelievable forecast, but rather castigated himself intensely because he was incorrect about the storm’s intensity. Apparently he thirsts more for correction and improvement than for flattery, which I agree is a good thing, but I take this time to praise him because he deserves it, and also to explain why I listen to him when he has intuitions.

If you look back at posts from that time on his blog at Weatherbell, you will see that even as Hilary was forming Bastardi was posting the track of Nora in 1997. Therefore, as Hilary quickly strengthened just as many storms have strengthened over those warm waters, and then headed north towards California, there was no reason to call the storm “unprecedented.”

So why do they do it?

Next the weather bureau caught on, and predicted Hilary would strengthen greatly and then weaken greatly, as west coast storms always do, but that, if it came north fast enough, it might retain hurricane strength as a minimal hurricane . It stated no hurricane had hit California since they had west coast offices (which wasn’t until 1940, after the Long Beach Tropical Storm surprised everyone in 1939.)

So what did the media then report? They certainly didn’t bother to report that the storm would weaken greatly coming north, but did report it was strengthening to force 4. This created the panic the storm was strengthening as it neared, when the weather bureau was quite clear it would weaken. Then the press also reported this was “unprecedented”, as no hurricane had ever hit California. Then they added this was likely due to climate change or Global Warming or your vehicle, unless it was electric.

Why do they do it?

The media wound up looking like a cat with lots of feathers but no bird, as Hilary was a bit of a dud. It was not far enough west to be like the 1939 Long Beach storm, or far enough east to drench Arizona like Nora in 1997. It split the difference, was too slow to retain hurricane winds, and lost some moisture over the mountains of Baja California. It did drench some desert communities, and was a greater gullywasher than a desert thunderstorm is, but was nowhere nearly as bad as the weather bureau worried it might be. This actually pleased the weather bureau, which would (for the most part,) far rather err on the side of caution than to see people put in danger by a storm which surprises forecasters.

There were some cellars flooded, and some cars had engines ruined when foolish drivers drove in waters too deep. The media, meanwhile, did its best to get dramatic pictures and promote panic about Global Warming.

Perhaps the most dramatic video I saw portrayed the moment a stream which had been dry for decades abruptly faced waters charging down from the mountains, and those waters picked up every twig, stick and log that had fallen for decades, and flushed it all downstream. As the waters progressed, they picked up more and more wood, until you could not see water at all. All one saw was a tremendous amount of wood, coming around the corner of a canyon in the distance and bearing down on the cameraman, who wisely moved off the bridge he stood upon.

At this point one tends to hear a lot of second-guessing about the mechanics and engineers who designed the flood-control channels, (only budgeted enough to handle once-every-fifty-year storms), who perhaps did not foresee such amazing masses of driftwood, nor such wood’s ability to plug up even large culverts as swiftly as beavers. In any case the desert received a years worth of rain in six hours, and bridge abutments were washed away, but more annoying was what was brought in, which was mud. Yet this was expected, especially below areas where the soil was destabilized by forest fires, (and there were even road signs warming of such mud, weeks before Hilary arrived).

And the mud did mess up golf courses which were constructed on flood plains where it would have been unwise to build houses, (though perhaps such messes could be called a water hazard and sand trap all in one, by dedicated golfers.)

And some are tempted, of course, to test limits, and do build on flood plains.

However it wasn’t as bad as the media seemingly hoped. No one died, and in many places, though the media screamed they had received a year’s worth of rain, it amounted to only three inches. (It is a desert, after all.)

In places like Palm Springs there were actually far more people out and about, as Hilary passed through. Usually, the streets are deserted in the heat of the day, with temperatures often up as high as 115 degrees (46 Celsius). But the deluge dropped temperatures to a balmy 86, (30 Celsius), and the breezy rain didn’t stop people, who actually seemed to find the conditions refreshing.

Many went out in the rain simply to frolic in the delightful refreshment, which returns me to my original subject, which is why the media feels it must horrify everyone. Why can’t people focus on the technical details which interest mechanics and engineers. Why get so distracted…

…oh….yes…blonds.

If you look back to the third paragraph of this post you will see that I stated that when a scientist was feeling sorry for himself, he may be susceptible to bribes. I stated, “Money may not slake his (or her) thirst for Truth, but may gratify his (or her) hankering for blonds.”

This is true for humanity as a whole. We tend to pervert our healthy instincts. It is healthy to nourish our bodies, but we can turn that into gluttony. Rest is good for the weary, but we can create sloth. Even breathing can be turned, by certain forms of yoga, into euphoria so addictive it makes heroin look like chump change. And reproducing our bodies perhaps leads to the wildest perversions of our healthy instincts.

Considering we all tend to be tempted off course in this manner, one way or another, the smartest response is to, “confess sin and receive an assurance of pardon,” and the stupidest thing is to be “given to sin.”

I like that word “given.” If you are given away, some hand is letting go of you. What is that hand? I think it is the hand of Truth.

Truth is the most agreeable of agreeable things, and this is especially true when you are frank, and confess you lost your train of thought because a beautiful blond walked by just then. Truth pardons that because it is truthful. It may not be high minded, and in fact may be lustful, but it is the truth. Maybe you blush to the roots of your hair, but Truth embraces you. You have stood by Truth, so Truth stands by you. Truth also helps you get back on track, and remember where the rails led, before you lost your train of thought.

If you are scornful of honesty the derailing becomes serious. You are “given to your sin”, which is a way of saying you have lost hold of what separates men from beasts. If your sin is sloth, you can’t overcome your laziness. And so on. Until you can’t even tell if you are a man or a woman.

Becoming lost in this manner tends to be a gradual process of degradation, full of self-delusion. We imagine we are making progress when we are actually pacing back and forth like a tiger in a cage. This seems to occur because there is something in the human spirit which craves freedom, and which knows when it is enslaved by some sort of addiction, and therefore we tend to alternate by being repelled by our addiction and being seduced by it. We make New Year’s resolutions and then fail to keep them. Back and forth; back and forth; restlessly going nowhere like pacing tigers.

The savior is Truth, which has been there all along, but we have failed to grasp it. Ambiguously, control comes through giving up control, but the ego craves power. Once the ego thinks Truth can be disregarded the ego becomes lost and the craziness of the power-mad appears.

A simplistic escape from the debauchery of the craziness is to enlist in some discipline. It does not matter much if it is a religion or a branch of the military, it is helpful to have some sort of drill sergeant bellowing at you, making you do what you don’t want to do. However, this tends to be the tiger walking one way in the cage, and the repression is accompanied by a longing for freedom. As soon as the soldier goes on leave or the sailor’s on “liberty”, the debauchery reappears with a vengeance. The fifty weeks of work leads to the wild two-week vacation, after which you’re wasted. This is the tiger walking the other way in the cage.

This is all avoided if one clings to Truth like a small child clinging to a father’s leg in a crowd, but people can’t believe it can be so simple. Also it offends their pride to be so small, so much like a little child. They’d much rather swagger. So off they go, either to boot-stepping discipline or to a wild party.

In the desert southwest the biggest party is the “Burning Man” gathering, held on a playa in Nevada. Originally this was a celebration of artists who simply wanted to be artists, rather than being burdened by the discipline of dishwashing, (or whatever other job they did to get by). It was an escape from the discipline that responsibly pays the bills. Originally it was held on a beach by San Francisco, but fires were made illegal on that beach, so they moved to a playa in Nevada, which has a certain irony, as “playa” is a Spanish word for “beach”.

In the American Southwest the word “playa” has evolved to mean the bed of a dry lake, an area which is usually very flat, and paved by a crust of dried minerals like a pavement, perfect for campers and RV’s to drive over. All sorts of artists would arrive and become “artistic”, which involved some genuinely inspired genius, (and discipline), but also a fair amount of promiscuous decadence. To be free of the chains of breadwinner discipline involves what people call “cutting loose”, and this tends to mix heaven with hell.

Then there came an infusion of amazing amounts of money. The people of Silicon Valley also wanted a break from the dreary discipline of “writing code” and from figuring out how to cram ever larger amounts of memory onto ever smaller chips. Some of these people were so rich they could blow a million dollars on a party. Some money went for drugs. (“Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you make too much money.”) But some went for sheer fun; for huge and silly artworks, for preposterous costumes and excellent music; and for dancing like mad. The parties became events one needed to attend; a sort of proof one was a fashionable person who went where the “in crowd” goes.

However a playa, as a dry lake bed, may, when the climate reverts to a wet phase, revert to being a lake. If it so much as starts this process, the pavement-like surface reverts to mud, which slows the party down. This was a known hazard of the “Burning Man” celebration. Here is a picture of the situation in 2014:

If such a damper could happen before, it cannot be called “unprecedented” if it happens again. In fact, as former-Hurricane Hilary had brought so much moisture north, and dumped it in the deserts, it followed that the so-called “monsoon” would have more moisture to work with, when it came to building thunderstorms. One might have even forecast a greater than average “probability” that the Burning Man would be afflicted by a damper, and even a swamp.

Which is what happened.

My granddaughter could likely find better pictures, but the above is from a decent post about the debacle, found here:

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/burning-man-2023-descends-into-chaos-after-rains-leave-73000-campers-stranded-2276495/

The media went wild over the prospect of doom and gloom. Just think! 73,000 people stuck in the mud, miles from safety! Surely this was a Global Warming disaster! To their apparent disappointment, the media only could report a single person died, (when they stepped in front of a bus). There was nothing to report in the way of starving and thirsty people, miles from food and water, resorting to desperate deeds. In fact there was little negativity at all. But there was also very little reporting of the positive way people actually responded to the challenge.

I did a bit of digging, and to me it seemed the situation was an example of the American selfishness going “Yippee”, but being smacked in the nose by a rolled-up newspaper, whereupon an unexpected resourcefulness and self-reliance appeared, and things worked out better than any could have expected. In fact many delighted in the challenges, and some even felt the party was improved by mud.

Undoubtedly the situation involved a degree of danger. Initially even Fraudulent Biden was alerted to the potential of a national disaster. But there was no disaster. I find this a little bit wonderful. I like to hear the tales of individuals who disentangle and extract themselves from disasters, but this was not a few individuals. This was 73,000. It was as if the Titantic sunk and everyone survived.

Surely there is a tale here that would be good to be told, but the media does not want to tell it. They cannot free themselves from pacing like the tiger in its cage. They can see only one response, when those who “party hearty” get in trouble, and that is to bring back the drill sergeant. The government must step in and clout its discipline left and right. That is the only way the 73,000 can be saved. So, you can imagine how offended such a government is, when the 73,000 can’t be bothered filling out the applications for government assistance, and simply save themselves.

History seldom shows such escapes from the tiresome to-and-fro pacing of the tiger. For one sad example, when German faith was shattered by their defeat in World War One, their society fell into despair, deep debt, depression, hyperinflation that wiped out lifetime’s savings, and an abandonment of hope that led to the faithless immorality enacted on the stages of Berlin, (where part of one stripper’s grossly pornographic act was to publicly inject herself with heroin). Yet this decadent backlash only prompted the opposite backlash of Hitler’s extreme discipline, an insanity worse than the worst seen on the sick stages of Berlin. The tiger paced from insanity to insanity, from boot-camp to shore-leave to boot-camp, without escape. There were the ninety-seven bad ideas without ever the three good ones. What made the “Burning Man” different? How did they avoid repeating history?

Witnessing this, I again felt something was missing in my vocabulary. My mind went back to my misspent youth, when I would have been in a hurry to be “in with the in-crowd”, and to say, “I go where the in-crowd goes.” I wanted “to be a nonconformist like everyone else.” It is in many ways embarrassing to look back at old diaries and see what a copy-cat I was. However, after too long working the dullness of a Real Job, I wanted to cut loose and be free. (To be honest, sometimes “too long” was one day.)

Now that I’m a tiresome old coot, I tend to skim through the artworks on display at an event like the Burning Man, and silently check off the copy-cats. For example, there are only so many ways to portray sad polar bears regarding burning oil rigs, before the politically-correct sameness overwhelms the best surrealist efforts, and the revolution seems less than revolutionary. In fact to be truly revolutionary might gain a disapproving glance at “Burning Man”, for it might portray Polar Bears savagely killing and devouring cute baby seals, or oil rigs saving millions from freezing and starving.

However the spirit of “Burning Man” is largely accepting of any and all, and even so-called right wing conformists are welcome, as long as they don’t mind it if they never get central stage.

One thing I noticed about conformists was that they want to look like they are not conforming. They like the idea of being first, at the forefront, and revolutionary, but under examination much of what they do is not new; it is merely opposite. If short hair is in fashion they move towards longer hair, and if long hair is in fashion they move towards shorter hair.

When young I was forced into seeing the absurdity of fashion for a couple of reasons. The first was that I was a year younger than my classmates, and still a boy as they all became deranged teenyboppers. In my eyes they went mad, as they abruptly didn’t want to go fishing. They developed an aversion to mud when I still wallowed.

The second reason was due a family downfall, and the fact that we became poor and my mother had to revert to Great Depression strategies to get by, and this included hand-me-down clothes. Patches were not in fashion back then, nor were pants so worn that once a month I suffered the indignity of having the seat split right down the fanny-crack. It has been over forty years since I have suffered such embarrassment, but back then it’s regularity made it hard to be fashionable.

One tends to lose interest in a game one has no hope of ever winning, and for me this seemed true of the fashion game. I suppose I gravitated in the direction of being a slob. However back then there was something called “the dress code” which kept one from slipping too far from conformity.

Some “dress code” rules made no sense to me; blue jeans were not allowed while “school pants” were allowed, even when the “school pants” had patches and the blue jeans had none. However, for the most part the parameters of fashion were a given I didn’t question, even when I ridiculed them. One could poke fun at the parameters without actually stepping over the line. (“Mad” magazine was good at this.)

To a certain degree fashion was ludicrous, and appeared to have little connection with Truth. I saw this one winter when my family was at its poorest, and I was hunching about in a fashionable but threadbare coat shivering, and then my mother did some wheeling and dealing at a place called “The Children’s Exchange” and traded in three old coats for a single old coat I absolutely adored. It was a couple sizes too large, and utterly out of style, but well designed. Called a “Mighty Max”, it related to a simple truth. The truth was: It was winter and I was cold. But as soon as I put my Mighty Max on I wasn’t cold anymore. It was like being inside a warm pillow, or being hugged, and felt so good I could easily say to hell with fashion.

The fact that fashion was ludicrous was to a degree common knowledge, even to the degree that “status symbol” was a commonly used phrase, employed to poke fun at certain things, yet at the same time it could not be denied that some fashions simply attracted people. For example, one fashion of that time made cars heavier, more expensive, and supplied little aerodynamic lift, and yet there was something undeniable “cool” about cars with fins, so the fins got larger and larger for a while.

It is a bit of a sidetrack, but the fashion of big, bulky cars seems a typical example of the American “yippee” experience heading off through mingled greed and a spirit of fun towards the inevitable whack across the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. The whack took the form of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the resultant Arab Oil Embargo. Some of the lumbering American cars got as little as five miles per gallon, (and included a new trickery called “planned obsolescence”), while Japanese cars got over twenty miles a gallon and were wonderfully durable. As the price of gasoline doubled the American automobile industry crashed into deep trouble, and greedy people abruptly found themselves with empty pockets, and there was a fair amount of rending garments and gnashing of teeth, and 97 bad ideas for every 3 good ones. But…

…But in the end the American auto-industry came bouncing back. Somewhere in the background, behind all the frenzy and hysteria, the common sense of mechanics, engineers and scientists quietly faced the Truth, and Truth provided answers.

What I lack-vocabulary-for is words that describe the capacity Truth has to provide an escape for people who have landed themselves in trouble. Humanity usually has no one but itself to blame for the messes it gets itself into, and the blame-game only furthers the mess. The rich justify their greed as the poor justify their envy, and the situation tends to spiral downwards, unless the escape appears like mercy from the blue.

This mercy always comes as something as a surprise to those who have turned away from Truth, and accept the pessimistic cynicism that surrounds being “given to sin.” Yet over and over history demonstrates Dark Ages giving way to a Renaissance. What is the difference in thought that separates darkness from such dawning of light?

In my mind the difference is perhaps illustrated by a quick comparison of Paul Ehrlich and Norman Borlaug in the year 1970.

Paul grew up in a sterile suburb while Norman grew up on a working farm. Paul’s father was a shirt salesman, skilled at making people buy what they often didn’t need, while Norman’s father, as a farmer, produced a necessity. Paul went to college and studied obscure butterflies, while Norman studied how to continue a process that mankind had followed for a thousand generations: Choosing the best seeds to plant for the next year’s crops. (Neither corn nor wheat, as they now grow, exist in nature, and both involve seed-selections other than natural selection.) Paul’s study of butterflies attracted few investors, and he needed to grovel for funding and grants, while Norman’s study bore immediate results, and not only attracted investors by increasing crops, but attracted conservationists by making it less necessary to chop down wilderness to increase farmland, because old farmland became more productive.

At this point it might seem Paul was destined to be poor and Norman to be rich, but Paul was interested in fame and fortune more than butterflies, while Norman was interested in improving the productivity of crops, and only cared for fame and fortune when it involved getting funding to further his study.

At this point Paul, perhaps using salesman-charm learned from his father, pulled off a remarkable career-switch. He switched from butterflies to being a prophet of doom and gloom. For some reason he had the charisma to make pessimism exciting, and abruptly made very good money basically stating most of mankind was going to starve while choking in its own pollution, within twenty years. He appeared on the most popular late night TV show of those times (Johnie Carson) roughly twenty times, and likely wasn’t asked once about butterflies.

Meanwhile Norman was making sure most of mankind stayed fed. As Paul appeared on Johnie Carson and enchanted the public with what was tantamount to a scientific-sounding sensationalism, (sort of like a good teller-of-ghost-stories by a campfire), Norman was at the center of the “Green Revolution”. The very nations Paul stated were hopeless became self-sustaining and even exported food.

At this point one discerns a difference, and draws a distinction. Even if one gives Paul the benefit of the doubt and states he was warning people of a worst-case-scenario, what he proposed seems brutal for a man once enamored by butterflies. He proposed foreign aid be cut off to “hopeless” countries, and that their people be “allowed” to starve. He proposed the males of India and Pakistan be castrated, to prevent population growth. He proposed that, even in the wealthy west, people who chose to have large families be penalized, even if their children were well-fed, happy, and well-educated. He himself chose to have a single child, but then did not chose to be castrated. (He chose a vasectomy, I suppose so he could continue enjoy sex, without the inherent responsibility.) And he made this behavior pay, even to a point where a University sought him out, as a “famous person”, and offered him a cushy position which had nothing to do with butterflies, (which he knew a thing nor two about), but rather about “sustainability”, (even though time proved he was an ignoramus on the subject).

Meanwhile Norman was so consumed by his work that, when his wife informed him that he had won a Noble Peace prize in 1970, he thought she was joking and went on with his work.

And how about me, in 1970? Who did I hear about? Sadly, Paul got all the press, and Norman little. I was so convinced we would run out of oil by 1980 that I changed my life in accordance, and even convinced my mother to invest in solar panels. (In my own defense, it was to heat hot water, which makes far more sense than using solar panels to generate electricity. I think something like 90% of Israel now uses solar power to heat their water.)

Then, of course, we did not run out of oil in 1980, and I felt like I had been a fool. The changes I had made to my life were changes that I needed to reverse, and, because admitting I am wrong is not easy for me, reversing course was not an easy process. But Truth demanded I do it, so I did it.

Did Paul do it? Did he set a good example and make my life easier by admitting his gifts as a prophet were nil? Paul was so wrong that he qualified as a false prophet, and in ancient Israel he would have been led to the edge of town and stoned to death, but fortunately he was in America, and all you get here is a rolled up newspaper whacked across your nose.

What truly amazed me most was that Paul refused to admit he was wrong. How was that even possible? He predicted a billion would have starved by 1990, and worse. None of it happened. How can a person be so wrong and not admit it?

He had various excuses, which basically boiled down to “My ideas are right, but it is taking longer than I thought for them to manifest.” Meanwhile he kept his position as a famous person at his university, and continued to make decent money giving talks as a famous person.

To me it looked like he was stuck on stupid. I was reminded of a line in a hit song of those times, “Every form of refuge has its price.” If he had stayed with his study of butterflies he would have been like a honorable starving artist, but he blundered into a cozy situation and became addicted to it. Dishonorable. (But I notice that, in his old age, he has returned to studying butterflies.) (But not for profit.) But back at that time Paul seemed to me like a sort of sell-out. His dumb ideas had made a mess of my life, and I had suffered through following his bad advice, but he was too weak to suffer, and instead stayed cozy. He was living the good life as I endured The School Of Hard Knocks. I suppose some envy was involved, but he lost any respect I had for him.

But how about Norman? Did I switch sides, and become a follower of Norman? No, because I never heard of Norman, despite the fact he’d won the Noble Peace Prize. The media didn’t salivate over him the way it did over Paul. There was little sensationalism involved in cross-breeding strains of wheat, and yet Norman may have quite literally saved a billion people from starving to death. That should generate a sensationalist headline or two, but the media prefers a Paul, saying a billion would die. And that is the difference.

I brought up Paul and Normon because they exemplify the difference between dishonor and honor, between being “given to sin” and being “given to Truth,” and between being basically harmful and being basically helpful. It boils down to difference between lies and the Truth.

Thinking about this difference is no small matter. It currently involves the whole world. World War Three (so far) is occurring on an intellectual level, and involves the differences which I’ve brought up, sort of as a sub-topic while discussing droughts and floods in the American Southwest. But this “difference” can’t be dismissed as a mere sub-topic when it infuses, invades and in some ways poisons even topics as innocent as talking about the weather in the American Southwest.

When I began this post I thought it would consist of a pithy comment about how some sensationalism had been refuted by the “mega-drought” becoming a “mega-flood”, but the post, (and my life), have not gone as I intended. Events have occurred which give one pause. Such pauses tend to elongate my posts. My posts become repositories of my thought, as I am forced to stop and think. Hopefully readers will have forgiven me as this post became long winded, but there is much to think about.

I also am arrogant enough to think some ideas in this post are worth sharing, and, though I am far from finished thinking-about-things, now seems a good time to cut this post short and tie up lose ends.

At one point I describe my granddaughter as a nine-year-old and another as a ten-year-old. This is not an inaccuracy, but rather is evidence of how long it has taken me to write this post. This post was started as snows started to melt, and now they are starting to fall again in the mountains of the American Southwest. The “monsoon” (or “monseen”) has past, and we now watch the winter systems.

If you are rooting for a mega-drought, you will be disappointed to learn a weak low did manage to kick some significant moisture into southern California.

This rain approached 3 inches in some locals. In most areas it was less. However the sensationalist media reported it as “once every thousand year rains.” People seemingly said, “Ho hum”, and went about their business, as the media showed flooding in low places,and rains moved from California to Arizona.

Why does the media insist on making such a big deal of what is a very wet day, but not really that great a problem? Are they stuck on stupid?

This immediately embarks my mind on two long-winded sidetracks, right when I stated I was going to cut this long post short. In a nutshell they would describe:

1.) How people get trapped by a situation they find cozy, and learn that “every form of refuge has its price.” It is up to the individual to decide if the price is worth paying.

2.) How such a trap can become an addiction which compromises ideals, and creates a hypocrisy which mingles lies with Truth, until the worsening dependence results in morality so muddied people don’t know what Truth is any more. Describing this would lead to further sidetracking, and involve many pages describing how a perverted form of Islam came to form an unholy alliance with communism, based upon the legitimacy of lying.

(Hint: The Byzantine’s were so corrupt and so cruel that, in specific situations involving imprisonment and torture, Islam allowed lying, however this narrow window, basically an exception-to-the-rule, has been expanded grotesquely into what seems to be a general strategy, making the word of some Mohammedans worthless; if their lying is allowed their treaties are worthless. However accepting deceit as a political strategy has allowed their worst to ally with communists, even when communists are mistreating Mohammedans.) (I think both sides are well aware their alliance is an expediency, and that as soon as they are done exterminating everyone else they will turn on each other.)

I was struck by an awful irony, for, it was while contemplating the fact 73,000 escaped calamity at the “Burning Man” festival, other young people, singing and dancing and rejoicing at another festival, were utterly unaware of another calamity approaching them in para-gliders. Though many escaped the atrocities enacted by Hamas, many did not. The vileness was so pronounced that the “difference” gouges the page and obliterates the paper; to even mention “hitting a dog on its snout with a rolled up newspaper” seems wrong.

However the same principles apply, albeit in a warlike setting. Humanity creates a problem that demands a response, and one prays for leaders like Churchill, able to weed through the 97 bad responses for the 3 good ones.

Finding the three good responses is not possible if one uses cancel culture to disallow second opinions. Instead one stays stuck on stupid, and something about such stagnation gnaws away at the human spirit. When solutions based on Truth are prevented, bad festers in the manner hatred festered in Gaza, until, like a boil, the pus bursts forth, at which point the headache and discouragement of psychological warfare becomes the horror of actual, physical wars and genocides.

The founders of the United States were not unaware of the evil mankind is capable of, and it was to avoid that evil that the American Constitution was devised to prevent any one person gaining the power to silence others. Freedom of Speech was vital, and resulted in amazing progress. To cancel Freedom of Speech is to cancel progress, which makes it absurd that those who are most interested in censorship call themselves “progressive.”

The problems of the progressive movement are that progressiveness was one of 97 bad ideas that sprang out of a crisis the world faced 175 years ago. At that time the agrarian system was facing challenges, and people were going hungry due to the potato famine and other woes, but Truth provided answers, one of which involved the start of the industrial revolution, which involved home industry being replaced by factories, people moving to cities, and eventually new crises. This became a general upheaval all over Europe, called the generic term “The revolution of 1848”, though in fact it involved many different situations in many different places, motivating all sorts of deep thinking and attempts to find Truth. This is a continual process, in essence a revolution which has continued to this day, except for one particular stagnation that refused to change. That is communism, which calls itself a revolution, though I don’t see how, considering they’ve gone 175 years without changing.

How can they prevent change? This is how: They call changing a “counterrevolution”, and do everything possible to prevent it from occurring, including lying. They call any idea that differs from their own a weed they must remove from their garden, but their gardens are barren, and are proof that the worst weed of all is communism itself. They are the antithesis of progress, for, I repeat, by calling any who differ a “counterrevolution” they have gone 175 years stuck on stupid, and are the epitome of sameness, and are about as opposed to revolution as you can get. Revolutionary? One does not change things for the better simply by wearing a Che Guevara hat; that is merely a fashion and an example of a tiger pacing in a cage. Nor does one change things for the better by being a so-called militant, and, (though praised by propaganda in the mainstream media that calls you “a peaceful protester”), revealing your true colors by burning the storefronts of hard working entrepreneurs, attacking the police that protect you, or even paragliding into “raves” to commit atrocities. Such behavior only proves one is an useful idiot foolish enough to serve as cannon fodder for equally idiotic people who are older and a few brain-cells wiser; wise enough to work behind the scenes where they won’t get shot, or won’t get shot until things really get out of hand and they face what Nicolae Ceaușescu faced on Christmas 1989.

In conclusion, one does not change things for the better, in any way, shape or form, by warping or denying the Truth.

The founders of the United States wrote its constitution based on the premise people respected Truth and would not lie. However communism extols lying. Therefore a communist can place their hand on the Bible and pledge to uphold the constitution of the United States, and their word means nothing. Their intent, if true communists, may be to destroy the United States, and yet they can say with dewy eyes how they respect the Founding Fathers, and also the Father of all, which is Truth. Afterwards they can laugh up their sleeves, “Heh, heh, heh! What suckers and chumps these losers all are!”

History seems to show us that, whatever short term gains such scoundrels may gain by denying Truth, in the long term the result is downfall. Sometimes it is merely the downfall of that particular individual, a Macbeth at his tragic end, but other times it involves the downfall of entire empires. No matter what glories of God they may have shone with in their past, the rot of corruption can crumble their knees, and they fall. The United States is not above such an end. Past glories do not guarantee a future that is spared being ignoble.

History also shows such downfalls do not create a worldwide Dark Age, for if Truth is suppressed in one place another place benefits from the first place’s insistence upon staying stuck on stupid, for the second place allows Truth to lead them, and they spring up as a surprising new power in the world. In fact our very word “renaissance” is historically closely associated with the final downfall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. In like manner, the fall of the United States can’t make Truth be untrue. Truth will simply burst forth someplace the power-mongering politicians never suspected it would. As they suspiciously regard Hungary, Poland, and India as hotbeds of counterrevolutionary dogma (IE: Truth) the next center of a new nation which astonishes the world might be Window Rock, Arizona.

Personally I hope I don’t live to see the downfall of the United States, although the behavior of many politicians in Washington D.C. does reek with a disgraceful, ignoble stench. To call them “The Swamp” is apt. They are shameful, but my hope is that this merely represents the entire nation getting whacked in the nose by a rolled up newspaper, after going “Yippie” too long (in many ways, but don’t ask me to go there, for I am concluding this post.) My further hope is that my nation retains its capacity to utilize Liberty and seek out the three good solutions from the ninety-seven less-good suggestions.

I’m still waiting.

The agony I feel is shared by fellow Americans, and was expressed so well by an unknown who called himself “Oliver Anthony” that his YouTube post became an overnight sensation. After two days it was well past a million “views” on YouTube, and past six million a few days later. People made a big deal of these numbers, and the people who like to think they control Truth because they attempt to control the media (and Free Speech) were wonderfully disconcerted, for they had not given this young man permission to speak.

The people perturbed by six million views can only be more perturbed by the fact that after four months this low-budget production now has over a hundred million views. (To be precise, 105,602,279 at 11:30 PM EST on December 23, 2023.)

Admittedly such a song is largely heart, and, while pointing out the head-oriented reality of certain problems, offers little in the way of solutions. However it does express a lack of faith in the solutions offered by “rich men north of Richmond”. (IE: Politicians in “The Swamp” of Washington D.C.). In essence it states the ordinary person is aware the liars are lying, and it is causing them anguish.

Although I do love music and think the power of the heart is superior to the power of the head, I am dissatisfied with merely moaning and groaning about the idiocy of the “progressives”. I want to meet them on the low level of intellect, and clash horns like the goats they resemble. (Meaning no offense to my goat Lydia).

However the liars increasingly seem to avoid any actual intellectual discussions. Why not? Because that might allow Free Speech, which might allow a “counterrevolution”, which they dread. This proves they are afraid of Truth. Why? Because they are addicts. They would sell their grandmother’s false teeth for their next fix, but they are not addicted to heroin, but rather power and all its perks. They so enjoy the cushy privilege which power has seduced them with that they fawn and bleat and bow to a king other than the King who is called Truth.

Over and over this has led to the fall of great empires originally uplifted by Truth. The fall can be prolonged agony; the fall of the Byzantine empire saw the rise of the Ottomans, and Constantinople was renamed Istanbul, but after a time the Ottomans too suffered the increasing rot of corruption until they were called “The sick old man of Europe” and were nearly wiped from the map, at the end of World War One. Only “The Young Turks” saved them from becoming a people with no nation, (like the Kurds). And in the American southwest the charcoal in the ruins of the Hohokan city of “Snaketown” in the year 1100 suggest how the mighty can fall even here.

And so it goes, and an individual feels small and ineffectual in the face of such prolonged downfalls. What can a lone man do?

Stand by the Truth. We may be small, mere motes of dust in the sunlight of millenniums, but it is not our job to be the Truth in its entirety. Truth can take care of itself. We need to take care to be truthful in the small spaces allotted to us, and that is enough. Maybe we will see our small efforts in some backwater had the power of a pebble to start an avalanche, and simply by cross-breeding strains of wheat on farms, far from the mainstream, we will start a “Green Revolution” and save a billion lives, or maybe not. In any case, it is not the individual who actually saves the billion lives. It is the compassionate side of Truth.

In the darkest winter night
Look for unexpected Light.

Merry Christmas!

RAINS ON THE RIGHTEOUS

In my last post I was being a bit sardonic about the fact I lived too close to Boston, and therefore had to suffer their punishment, which was taking the form of a drought. It was uncanny how rains both from the east and from the north dried up as they approached our area, and I posted radar maps to demonstrate. Then I went to bed. A couple hours later I half-woke, hearing the sound of rain outside.

When I got up in the morning and checked the “timelapse-history” of the weather radar it was even more uncanny. The rain was still drying up as it neared Boston, but now it dried up five miles after it passed over my patched garden.

We only got between a tenth and a quarter inch, but it made all the difference.

The drought made darkness dry, nights dewless,
But last night I heard rain through my dusty dreams
Like an old friend winking from crowds cowed clueless
And blank-eyed by a leader's dulling schemes
To make low be high by pushing men down
And rearing up on his midget tiptoes.

Where dawn broke like cactus, today no frown
Creased my aging face as I arose.
The cool air seemed washed. All the dust was gone,
And purple scud brought the ocean's refreshment
As if a day at the beach was hid in dawn.
I didn't bother ask where the dryness went.
Sometimes it seems not the slightest bit strange
That a few drops of water makes everything change.

I have to hurry off, and just note the strange fact that we got rain and Boston’s western suburbs didn’t. Just a coincidence, but it happened again in the afternoon. As the ocean low departed and wind shifted to the west, afternoon showers and thunderstorm bloomed over New York State, and came cruising east. The ones aimed at Boston past north of Springfield in western Massachusetts, and shrank as they approached Worchester in central Massachusetts, and then utterly vanished from the map, however the ones along the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, while dwindling, made it to my garden and gave us another tenth of an inch.

Just a coincidence, but if I have time, I’ll update this post by including the radar maps. I’ll also see if my area, just north of the Massachusetts border, gets downgraded from “extreme” drought (red) to “severe” drought (orange) in the next updated drought-monitor-map.

As far as the suburbs west of Boston are concerned, the forecast is for three days of hot temperatures. I hope people are very careful with barbecues this weekend. Some towns don’t want to live up to their names.

Boston’s Drought Defeats a Rainstorm.

We had hopes of a summer rainstorm, as a coastal low did not head out to sea, but instead curved northwest off the tip of Cape Cod and into the Gulf of Maine.

Indeed, the forecast all day was for rain, yet in an uncanny manner it never fell. As the weak low came north some fairly robust rain showers came across Massachusetts Bay from the east, but the moment they hit the shore they vanished from the radar map. We saw purple clouds pass over, but they were flirts, and didn’t give us a kiss. Only when they hit the Berkshires of Massachusetts and the Green Mountains of Vermont did uplift cause them to unleash rains. This was insult to injury for we not only got rains to our east but also to our west.

As the weak storm moved up into the Gulf of Maine our winds shifted to the northeast, and all those showers you can see up in Maine in the above map started to be pushed down towards us. Yet again they dried up as they approached. Only the showers that hugged the coast retained enough moisture to give the south shore of Boston a few sprinkles.

It almost seems that the very dryness of our landscape discourages the uplift that brings about rain. Or perhaps the uplift does occur but is full of bone-dry air that squelches rain. In any case, that is my final attempt to be scientific. For when drought gets this extreme you tend to drift towards superstition, and the desire to burn witches.

Who do I blame? I blame the voters of Boston. They are the ones who brought this punishment from God upon us. Me? I’m an innocent bystander. I just happen to live too close to Boston. Maybe I’m just across an imaginary line, in New Hampshire, but imaginary lines don’t make good walls, when it comes to stopping a drought.

Whew! I’m in a rough situation! The only way to stop this drought, and get some rain for my garden, is to go into Massachusetts and convince those voters to choose differently. I’m not looking forward to such a task, for it is said (not in any scripture I know about) that, “If Democrats listened to reason there would be no Democrats”.

Likely I’m not up to such a task. Likely I should just pray.

Even the weeds are shriveling, and grass
On the lawns is brown, and when walked upon
It crunches. The sun's starting to harass
With its too-friendliness. I look to dawn
Hoping for gloom, but all I get is cheer.
Some lesson's being taught, and I've a hunch
It's to do with when I prayed skies would clear
When sick of rain. Now that the grass goes "crunch"
Dare I complain my prayer saw answer?

I know the danger of drought, how one butt
Dropped careless can release that orange dancer
Who makes her own wind, how both mansion and hut
Become mere ash. Did I pray for this doom?
I only know I'm now praying for gloom.

LOCAL VIEW –AN ALARMING BOSTON DROUGHT–

It has been a very dry summer, and an alarming drought is growing in New England.

When I was young, normalcy bored me, and any weather outside the norm seemed better than Camelot weather. I had a yearning for thunderstorms, and even tornadoes, and was very annoyed hurricanes never seemed to clobber New England anymore. But, if we couldn’t get storms toppling trees, maybe the sunshine could become a hazard, and drought could cause forest fires. Anything seemed better to me, as a young man, than the stultifying oppression of a Boston suburb. (Parents may have intended to create heaven on earth, but emerald suburbs were boring, boring, Bore-Ing.)

But now I am not a young man anymore. I am an old man, and a bit of a wet blanket on such youthful thirst-for-disaster. For one thing, where disaster once meant extra work, which I could profit from, now disaster means extra work I can’t afford paying others for, and must hobble about doing for myself. For another thing, thirsting for disaster nowadays always seems to involve Global Warming, and the politics of taking away people’s liberty and replacing it with a Globalist Big Brother. Heck with that. When I was young, I could thirst for disaster, and it didn’t cost the taxpayers a trillion dollars.

For example, if I wanted to thirst for a hurricane I had only to research the 1938 hurricane. If it happened before, might it not happen again? I had no need to involve men in white coats blaming CO2. In the same way, if I wanted thirst for drought and terrible fires, I had only to research the 1947 drought and the fires that burned nine towns from the map of Maine.

In the above picture the distant pines are likely at least fifty feet tall, so the sheet of flame arising is likely approaching 200 feet tall. Such fires might be ordinary among people in California, but it is completely outside the experience of modern New Englanders.

Oh, how I yearned for such excitement to return! The suburbs of Boston were so dull, dull, Duh-hell! And the trees grew so close together in the richer neighborhoods. A good fire with a southwest breeze of 25 mph would sure liven things up! But Alas! God had mercy and my wicked wishes never occurred, until….maybe….this year. If you look at the above drought map you will see the most tinder-dry forests are those fat-cat suburbs of Boston, where the suburbanites allow trees to grow right beside their houses, which the old Yankee never would allow.

Why not? Because every fifty years or so there might be a forest fire, and you sure didn’t want your house in such a forest as it blazed.

In fact, if you look back up to the picture of 1947 above, you will notice the people are standing by a house which is a heck of a long way from the fire. The house is far from the trees for a reason. People had common sense back then. People in the suburbs of Boston have no such common sense now, and the most expensive homes are midst the thickest trees.

Should the current drought result in a forest fire in the suburbs of Boston, many expensive homes will be involved. Yet will the wisdom of the builders and maintainers be so much as questioned?

No, Global Warming will be the culprit. Global Warming will get the blame. Why? Because of a political agenda which wants to do….. whatever…. but it has nothing to do with common sense.

Common sense just looks to the past to see what can be expected. This shouldn’t be any big deal. However, the past is politically incorrect, when the past does not affirm that the current situation is the “worst ever” and caused by “Global Warming”.

Now that I myself am an old-timer I inherently carry a certain political incorrectness. Why? Because I remember. I know the current drought is not the worst, for I lived through the worst.

The worst drought in New England history was not a single, extended period without rain, but season following season with below-normal rainfall. Slowly but surely it all added up. In some areas it began as early as 1960, but by 1964 it was becoming extreme. The water supply for the city of Boston was threatened. The chief reservoir for this water was the Quabbin, and in 1965 it hit an all-time low.

The above graph shows the severity of the drought, and also that, even when rains returned, the reservoir was slow to recover. Back in those days they could not blame Global Warming to raise taxes, but some politicians were deeply concerned Boston would lack water, and as I recall there were even suggestions that major rivers, such as the Connecticutt and Merrimac, should be diverted to the Quabbin Reservoir, so people in the suburbs of Boston could water their lawns.

Back then it turned out we did not need to divert major rivers. In like manner it may turn out we do not need to destroy our economy with a Green New Deal, when the current drought affects the plush suburbs of Boston.

As I say such things I confess I feel sorry for modern youth, who likely want disaster to liven up their lives, just as I once did. To such youth I say, you do not need Global Warming, to foster hopes of exciting ruination. You can do what I once did, and be a troublemaker.

A drought actually can be fun. I can prove it to you, for I lived through that 1960’s drought. I can show you my old diaries and tell you of the mischief I enacted, involving reservoirs it was illegal to fish and swim in. I managed to experience some exciting stuff at those shrunken reservoirs, despite the fact I lived in a boring suburb. People who know me have heard my tales too many times: The quicksand tale; the run-in-with-the-State-Police tale; the nearly-burn-down-the-neighborhood tale. But you’ve never heard them. Would you like to hear them?

What’s that? Do they conflict with the narrative about Global Warming? Well…maybe…just a bit. They do supply evidence the current drought isn’t the worst ever, and that the current drought may be caused by natural climate cycles, such as a 60-year AMO cycle. After all, the last drought was roughly sixty years ago, which suggests…. what’s that? I need to be censored? My blog should be shadow-banned? I’m a racist? Does that mean you don’t want to hear my three stories?

Oh, all right then. Have it your way. I’d hate to see you lose your nice, taxpayer-funded job, or be unable to afford your nice house midst the crowding trees in the emerald-green suburbs of Boston. But…what’s that I smell? Smoke?

GARDEN WAR –Friends and Foes–

As nations such as Shri Lanka run out of money and their people are told they can’t buy fuel or fertilizer, it seems events are teetering towards situations where the blunders of a few elites can bring about the misery of millions.

The government of Shri Lanka was hard hit by the covid fraud, for the cessation of tourism robbed the nation of much of its income, even as it still had to pay its expenses. As a small nation, its income besides tourism was largely “exports”, as its expenses were largely “imports”. The problem it faced is obvious when you see both their top export and top import was “Mineral fuels including oil”. They exported $695.2 million, which seems like a goodly amount, until you see they imported $2.1 billion, or three times as much.

The doings of a distant island caught my attention because I’m interested in organic fertilizers, and their government decided they could balance their budget a little by stopping the import of chemical fertilizers, and instead using locally-produced organic products. Didn’t work. Maybe they merely didn’t do the substitution corectly, but switching to organic fertilizers resulted in reduced crops, reducing the rice crop which feds the people, and also harming two major exports, namely cereal crops, ($241.4 million), and cotton ($232.8 million). In any case the nation wound up flat broke, and so deeply in debt no one would loan them any further funds.

This demonstrates two things.

First, it demonstrates that the well-meaning ideas of the elite can be badly researched and poorly thought-out, whether they be cancelling tourism or shifting to organic fertilizer. Hunger and the inability to buy gasoline, for millions of the unwashed masses, might not bother the elite, but when those millions stormed into the elite palace of the leader, and they swam in his private pool, the millions got the elite’s attention.

Eranga Jayawardena / AP

Second, rioting about a problem does not solve the problem. One prays to God to raise up new leaders who are more able to avoid simplistic solutions and who are more able to face the intricate details of complex issues. In the meantime, millions will continue to face the consequences of allowing simpletons to rule.

In the Netherlands the Dutch elite came up with an idealistic plan to reduce problems caused by the nitrogen in fertilizer by simply banning it. Didn’t work. In fact, it was a step too far, for the farmers (who would be bankrupted) immediately rioted, joined by a surprising number of non-farmers. The seriousness of the situation seems underscored by the fact the elite-ruled mainstream media seems determined to ignore the story, or else to fact-check it away.

Again, we see the consequences of allowing people, who feel they are elite and born to govern, invent rules which are bound to create suffering for millions. The millions rise up and say simpletons can’t be allowed to rule them.

Even the price of chocolate candy bars seems to hint at troubles for farmers in faraway Ghana. A candy bar that cost five cents in my boyhood is up to over two dollars, but the increase has not worked down to the farmers of the cocoa. (In this case the simpletons seem to be greedy middlemen).

As the United States is currently ruled by a simpleton, and as one consequence of his misguided energy policies may be famine, I decided maybe I should be more serious about making my garden productive this year. You’d be surprised at how intricate the details of gardening get, even on the small scale of my garden. I have seen I am just as capable of bad judgement as the leaders of Shri Lanka or the Netherlands.

For example, to fight high energy prices I burned a lot of wood last winter. This produced lots of wood ashes. I had heard wood ashes are good fertilizer, so I spread the ashes in my garden. Mistake. Ashes make the soil alkaline, and if the soil is too alkaline some plants are stunted, with leaves that are yellow rather than green. So, I am now conducting experiments involving turning alkaline soil acidic, (“souring” “sweetened” soil), right in the middle of a growing season. This is work which would be unnecessary if only I had gotten things right in the first place.

Considering I am past my prime, I am not fond of unnecessary work. I’m slow enough just doing the necessary. And what really irks me is when it becomes necessary to do work which I never saw coming.

For example, a drought. Last year was so rainy my potatoes rotted, but this year nearly every rain shower or thunderstorm misses us. (In other words, I never saw this coming because it didn’t come). The drought is particularly aggravating when I must water when I should be weeding, for I am watering the weeds.

Also, I had to divert my already-low levels of energy to building fences, for first my chickens and then my lone goat invaded my garden in unhelpful ways. I hate fences. But then, when I thought I had my own beasts corralled, I nearly turned my goat to goat-burger when I saw hoofprints down a row of beans and carrots, with all the plants neatly clipped to stubs. I swore softly and tried to figure out how the beast was getting past my new fence. But then I noticed that besides the goat-sized hoofprints there was a set of tiny hoofprints. Dawn broke on Marblehead. It wasn’t my goat. It was a doe and her fawn.

Oddy, the sight of those tiny prints quelled my anger. How can you get mad at Bambi? At the same time, I recognized the fact I wasn’t angry was likely because I wasn’t hungry. If I was hungry my tolerance would fade. In besieged cities famished citizens have eaten their children, if history can be believed, so maybe I could eat even a cute little Bambi. And maybe venison would supply more protein than beans and carrots. But I went to work putting up more fences, all the same. They were low and flimsy, but I figured a doe wouldn’t jump over them, if she had to leave her fawn behind.

(I hope you are noticing this situation is becoming more complex than one would imagine, when first planting some carrots and beans. Are you gardening vegetables, or venison?)

My garden also had successes, involving benefits brought by the cool weather, and also the fact watering is a job even an old man can do. I like standing about and spraying with a hose, and the deer and her fawn apparently were not fond of peas and lettuce. Those crops prospered. My crop of edible podded peas was especially bountiful, considering the fact not far away the parched lawn sounded crisp when you walked on the grass.

So, I had far more lettuce and peas than I could use, and I decided a good way to defy the government-created inflation was to lower my prices rather than raising them. I lowered prices to zero and had good fun being a philanthropist, giving away lettuce and crunchy, juicy, sweet edible podded peas for free. (Hopefully this rebellious behavior topples the government, or at least slightly decreases inflation.)

As I fought my little war with weeds and deer and potato bugs and drought and the government, I gained a small victory by allowing a certain small patch of weeds to thrive by my peas. (The weed was lamb’s quarters, which is easier to grow than spinach and tastes better, so it is hard to call it a weed,) however this particular patch was infested with aphids. Aphids are the favorite food of ladybugs. I caught every ladybug, (of at least eight different species), that I saw in my garden and brought them to my weeds. To my delight soon there were ladybug larvae on the lamb’s quarters

And soon afterwards not only were there far fewer aphids on those lamb quarters, but there were also fewer potato bug larvae eating my potatoes. Not that there were thousands of ladybugs swarming my garden, but they were around, and had their effect.

There were also other predators, including some small wasp which apparently likes potato bug larvae. I can’t claim to be intentionally breeding such wasps, but maybe I accidentally did so last year, when I allowed potato bugs to get out of hand. The wasp prospered last year, and that means this year they are all over the place, and a potato bug larva often may shrivel due to eggs the wasp laid in its back. In any case, as I walk down my lush row of well-watered potatoes, I’m surprised by how much less time I must spend picking potato bugs from the leaves. In fact I may even get a decent crop. I also have more time to spend weeding and watering other crops.

I bring this up to show that not all ideas involving being “organic” are stupid. I prefer to label myself a “conservationist” rather than an “environmentalist”. The difference being: I get my hands dirty while environmentalists live in ivory towers far from the dirt. I prefer to suffer and learn from my own mistakes, while their mistakes cause millions to suffer, and they only learn by being chased down the street by a howling mob.

The potato patch may well be a small victory, especially if the supply shrinks and the demand grows, and potatoes are in short supply by December. God wiling, I’ll have some big ones to give away for Christmas.

You can’t win them all, and my popcorn patch is a battle I may lose. Corn needs lots of water and is a heavy feeder, but does not like being fed wood ashes at all. The drought prevented the wood ashes from being diluted, and in places the soil was so caustic it burnt the corn at the base. So besides losing some seedlings to cutworms I killed some with my care. What a dope I can be! However, I won’t go down to complete defeat without a fight.

My counterattack was to replant, making sure to dilute the soil, and even including some dilute vinegar to counteract the wood ashes. This created new problems, for when you focus on watering you neglect weeding, and the weeds loved how I had soured the overly sweetened soil. Not that I neglected weeding right by the corn seedlings, but the rows of corn were like alleys between skyscrapers of weeds.

With the weeds becoming such a problem, I had to shift away from watering, yet as I weeded, I was amazed by the roots of the weeds. They formed a thick mesh just below the surface, rather than diving deep to find water in a drought. The weeds did this because their way to find water in a drought was to exploit my watering, and to grab the water at the surface before it could get down to the roots of my corn. These crafty weeds had to go!

With the help of a member of my childcare staff I not only weeded the corn, but raked up grass after mowing and used it to heavily mulch the row, to prevent new weeds. Take that, you suckers!

But solutions create new problems. As corn and grass are closely related, you might think a mulch of rotting grass would release nutrients that corn needs. Wrong. The exact opposite occurs, for the intermediate step, wherein the clippings rot, requires nitrogen the corn also requires. Therefore, you must fertilize not only the corn but also the clippings with a high nitrogen fertilizer.

At this point my eyes strayed to my chicken coop. Chicken manure is so high in nitrogen that you usually have to let it rot for a year and be rinsed of some of its potency, or it will kill plants with kindness. Also, it usually is a disgusting swill that splashes like brown paint when you clean the coop. This year, due to the drought, it was crumbly powder. For that reason alone, it seemed a good time to clean the coop. Also, it seemed that, if I sprinkled this powder well away from the corn, to avoid burning the corn, I could fertilize both the decomposition of grass and the corn. Lastly, I again watered the mulch-concoction with highly diluted vinegar to sour the sweetened soil.

Hmm. My garden sounds more and more like the test tubes of a mad scientist rather than anything remotely “organic”. Also, it would not surprise me much if my chemistry killed my corn. Yet maybe, just maybe, we will witness a late season rally, and the comeback of an underdog, and I will harvest some popcorn, which is easy to store for the winter, as you need only to convince your wife to make the dried ears a pretty ornament she hangs on her walls as fall decor.

I belabor you with all this to demonstrate how even an old-timer like myself is still learning, and how a garden is not a completed thing but rather a work in progress. I am constantly running up against new problems, and consulting other small gardeners for their ideas, seeking solutions. In like manner, if you want to formulate a sane government policy you need to gather many such minds, so you know of many solutions, and also of many problems that solutions reveal. It is through sifting through many ideas that a government can come up with a route, (or perhaps ten routes) to try, and these routes are only trials. If you want to formulate an insane government policy you walk into a situation certain you already know the answer, and you order wise people, who know better, about.

Oddly, this brings me back to the doe and fawn chowing down in my garden. This is seen as a bad thing by some globalists, for they (in Africa) apparently feel “bush game” allows “indigenous” populations to eat even when their gardens are taken away, when they should be forced to move from their homelands to allow for some monoculture which elitists feel is wise. For example: planting oil palms which are supposed to replace oil wells. Such policy is reminiscent of the clearances of Highlands in Scotland in the early 1800’s, because sheep seemed more profitable than people. In the short-term sheep indeed were more profitable than people, but such policy seemed less smart at the start of the Crimean War, when soldiers were needed. The Highlanders had been the best fighters, yet few were now available, and sheep were a lousy replacement.

It follows that one aspect of a monoculture of oil palms is that it wrecks both the natural and social environment. It not only drives away the “bush game”, it also drives away the “indigenous” people. Yet the elite investors growing square miles of oil palms insist they do so because they love the environment. They destroy an environment that once held five native villages, twenty species of native animals, and 200 native plants, because oil palms are better “for the environment” than fossil fuels. Such madness is why I refuse to call myself an “environmentalist”, and prefer “conservationist”. (It should be noted that some who invested in oil palms only did so to walk away with buckets of money from subsidies, and cared not one hoot about either society or ecology.)

In any case, I figure I’m an “indigenous” sort of fellow. My family has lived in these parts for four hundred years. So that makes the deer munching my carrots and beans my “bush game”. And together we represent riffraff the highly educated elite will wish removed so they can establish a National Park “for the foxes” (IE: because they want to go fox hunting.) (I have noticed the elite never say they do anything “for themselves.” If it isn’t “for the environment” it’s “for the children”. They see themselves as altruistic. That is why they are so puzzled when they’re chased down the street by a howling mob.)

Now, as an “indigenous” person one characteristic I should have is a nigh mystical closeness with nature. Not that I notice it all that much, but I do know the correct facial expressions. I used to hang out with the Navajo, and they showed me how to act when the tourists were about. And that is what elitists are: Tourists on their own planet. However, when no elitists are around, what should I do?

I decided I should have a talk with the deer, and an opportunity presented itself when I weeded late into the twilight, one evening, past the time the deer thought I should have gone home.

When I popped my head up in the corn patch and began talking, the doe did not seem surprised, and just listened to me rant.

I ranted on at great length about how, if the deer persisted on eating my garden, I would feel justified to eat them. After all, if I fed them all summer, they should feed me all winter. The doe did not seem the slightest bit offended, and stood listening. But then I noticed something, and said, “Hey! Where is your fawn?” Only then did the doe turn and walk away.

I then did what indigenous people do, which is to act as if family and community are real things. The elite, who seemingly know only divorce and abortion, are somewhat mystified by such earthy behavior, but all it boils down to is “comparing notes”. In the process of ordinary chitchat, the subject of deer was raised, and I swiftly learned of two events.

First, an animal lover had, to their own great dismay, struck and killed a fawn with their vehicle on a highway a third of a mile from my farm, two nights before. Second, that same night, and the following night, a lady who lived a half mile away had let her dog out to pee before going to bed, and the dog had walked out into a spotlight-lit lawn and been met by a doe who came out of the woods. The dog was young, skinny, had short, reddish-brown fur, and was roughly the same size as a fawn. As the woman watched amazed the doe and dog pranced and frolicked together for fifteen minutes, before they called it quits, and the dog came in for bed. That this happened one time seemed odd, but the second time it happened made it all the more bizarre. Was the doe in need of a foster child?

Now, if you are of the elite, I’m sure you will recognize the above tale as one of those quaint but fictitious creations regurgitated by primitive peoples. However, if you are afflicted by indigenousness, it is just one of those relationships you notice, like the ladybug’s relationship with healthy plants in the garden. Just as you don’t call the doings of ladybugs fictitious, you don’t call the doings of deer and dogs fictitious either.

Nor does the story stop there. Just as fawns can be struck by cars, leaving does aggrieved, does can be struck by cars, leaving fawns orphaned.

A child arrived at our childcare and described how she had seen two men hoisting “road kill” into the back of their pickup truck only a quarter mile from my garden. (Why waste the meat?) My initial (and unspoken) thought was that the poor doe who had lost her fawn had followed her fawn into death. But later that same day a fawn without a mother startled the children as they hiked, by bolting across their path, at my Childcare.

photo by Riley Bishop

This would suggest that, within the proximity of my garden, was a doe missing a fawn, and a fawn missing a doe. Apparently, this cruel modern world causes broken homes among deer as well as humans. The question then becomes, is there any social worker in nature who can unite the lonely-heart doe with the lonely-heart fawn?

Heck if I know. All I know is that, with all this drama going on, they stayed the heck out of my garden. Not that it will last. The children rushed up to me today with the news they had seen a doe with not one, but two, fawns, just across the pasture from my garden. I sense an imminent threat.

What is the threat? Is it that the doe will bring her two fawns into my garden to browse? Or is that the elite will step in to help?

Judging from prior behavior, the elite response to the situation will favor deer over farmers. They will ban automobiles, for killing a fawn and a doe. They will not ban deer, for wrecking my carrots and beans.

Me? Well, I may work a bit more on my fences, though I hate fences. Putting them up is hard work, and I’m too old for blisters on my palms, but will likely suffer a few more. But a few more blisters before I die seems worth it, if I avoid banning deer and banning automobiles, while getting the job of growing my carrots and beans done.

Elitists? Isn’t it odd how, when they erect their fences, they never get blisters on their palms? All they get is chased down streets by howling mobs.

DAMPENED DROUGHT SONNETS

As a man who never married until he was certain he was too old for marriage, (age thirty-seven), I know the bliss of a joy deferred. So, I am happy for my eldest daughter, who is getting married this June. However, there are times it seems to me girls get too giddy about marriage.

In my own case I really didn’t see why marriage was anyone else’s business. I was planning on a quiet ceremony at some Justice-Of-The-Peace’s, but a wonderful old woman (who had been something of a matchmaker) would have none of that and vetoed my practicality. She insisted my future wife have all the frills of a bachelorette party, and a shower, and a big, church wedding.

Now thirty-two years later I’m going through the same process with my daughter. Once again, I am the drab, practical party-pooper. Of course, I’m a little older and wiser. I may still try to fight City Hall, but I don’t fight girls when they get giddy. Let them pick flowers if they insist; I will plant the beans.

At times I confess to feeling a little sorry for myself. After all, I see myself as a poet, and that is supposed to mean I get to be impractical: I am the grasshopper fiddling as the ants all toil. But somehow my study of Truth flipped things around, and rather than spending other people’s money I’m the one making the money others spend.

A wedding is a short celebration, compared to the non-stop party going on in the Swamp. They are spending money they didn’t make, though they think they can make money by printing it, but that makes inflation (which is a sneaky way of taking the value of my money and making it less without an official tax). This makes me feel even more sorry for myself.

The sheer stupidity of the Swamp’s behavior wears me down. While women get giddy about marriage, which is a very real thing, they deny marriage is a real thing, but insist Global Warming, which is not what they say it is, must be attended to.

His Fraudulency, Biden, while visiting Japan, actually was honest, and admitted the increase in fuel prices is not due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but was an intentional policy intended to make fossil fuels so expensive that we stop using them, and therefore, (theoretically) stop warming the world. But guess what? The world looks like it is cooling all by itself. The La Nina has come roaring back for a third straight year, chilling the Pacific.

And computer models are showing a cool June world-wide.

CFSV2. 30 day for June

So basically, the Swamp is making fuel too expensive to use, in order to halt warming that isn’t happening. This deeply concerns me. I wasn’t going to have a garden this year, but now am worried shelves may be empty in the fall. So, I’m out toiling in my potato patch, even as all my help vanishes for a bachelorette party. Seems a good reason to tune up the violins of self-pity and be a poet.

Look what they've done to your poet, Lord.
I came with skipping glee, lacking the guile
They employed, innocently looking toward
My triumph, explaining with a bright smile
How all should honor my sparkling wit,
But they did not concur: "Who gave this brat
The right to rule? The loud fool does not fit
Our ugliness, and we must teach him that
The beauty that he sees is not allowed."
Why do  they rule that You must not be seen?
Why be blind to silver in a cruising cloud?
You're so generous, while they are so mean.
I've been singing to the deaf, but now long
To return where men don't say right is wrong.

Where can one retreat to? I sort of like the simplicity of Psalm 123. One is just a child going to their Dad after enduring the contempt and ridicule of an arrogant bully. There is no belaboring justification, no analysis of whether one deserved to be bullied, no stressing of what one might have done better. One just brings a hurt heart, seeking healing.

Even after amazing victories it seems that King David, as a “man of the blood”, suffered some sort of Post-Traumatic Stress, and rather than victorious felt a need to retreat to a hiding place and basically adopt a fetal position and suck his thumb. All arrogance and egotism was put aside.

Lord, may I pay a visit? Hide in folds
Of fabric in the skirtings of Your throne?
Be hid in your brilliance? No despot holds
Power in such presence. No children groan
Bathed by such light, swaddled by fabric
So ornate. I need to find a safe retreat
For I have no excuse. I'm not sick
Nor poor, but suffer some strange defeat
I do not understand, and want to hide
Someplace safe and beyond all banal thought;
Someplace tucked in close to your warm side
Where David retreated after he'd fought
When his bones and heart ached. To You he turned
For You alone hold the peace we have spurned.

I have to confess there is healing in such retreat, even though I can roll my eyes at the “Safe Spaces” set up in colleges for the exceedingly tenderhearted, and the “mental health days” such tenderhearted people expect for the most commonplace trials. There is a difference between simpering retreat and King David’s retreat, revolving around how spattered by blood you are.

A sort of insult was added to injury, as I tottered about my potato patch, and the insult was a drought. The weather swung from bone-chilling east winds off the cold Atlantic to sweltering heat up from Georgia, and then back, and then forth, so it was seldom comfortable, yet I had to water my seedlings. When seeds first sprout and have a single root like a thread, a dry day can kill them. Usually, my complaint in New Hampshire springs is too much rain, and mud, and seeds rotting, but this year I’ve had to haul about kinking hoses and an old watering can. This gives me one more reason for violins, but I was very glad to see rain in our forecast after a long, hard workweek. The air had shifted back to muggy heat from Georgia, and the sunset was obscured by gray, so I trusted the forecast and skipped the final watering at sunset, muttering TGIF and heading home.

The next morning I awoke before the sun, and, looking outside, saw the driveway was still bone dry. It was warm enough to walk outside barefoot and feel the dust between my toes, yet so humid my hair was lank, but there was no mist and no heat lightning flashing from afar. I sighed and knew my weekend must start with watering, which was an extra chore on my list. But first I’d sip a coffee and attempt a sonnet:

Early summer heat sneaks into mild May
And the night strangely swelters without crickets.
Drought makes the frogs sparce. I want skies of gray
And raindrops, not crisp leaves in the thickets.
My seedlings yearn for drenching thunder-rain;
They feel my watering can is too meager.
The humid night only hears an upstairs fan
Drone electrically, when trees seem eager 
For flashes of lightning drawing nearer.
All is awaiting relief, wet winds that croon
Rain's drumming; rainbows when skies get clearer, 
Like India before the yearned monsoon,
Yet I am not only awaiting the rain.
A Savior is coming to heal our great pain.

Just as I finished the sonnet, I heard a wonderful noise outside. After a long winter of leafless trees, there is no sound quite so sweet as the first platting of raindrops in young leaves, growing as a sigh from a sweetened darkness before dawn, and surrounding you with mercy.

I called it “a sign” and crossed out “water seedlings” from my Saturday-list.

LOCAL VIEW –Thirst Speaks–

Weather is unfair. Some get rain and some don’t. There is nothing particularly evil about this unfairness. It is just how the Creator made creation. Sometimes you get a bumper crop, and sometimes you are lucky to get a single turnip. The politicians in Washington can legislate all they want, but they aren’t going to alter the fall of raindrops from the clouds. Prayer might work, but legislation doesn’t.

One interesting thing about droughts is that they tend to perpetuate themselves. The dryness creates hotter temperatures which deflect moisture around the periphery of the core. This is quite obvious when the drought is gigantic, as the Dust Bowl was in 1936, but even in the cases of smaller and more local droughts rain has a strange propensity to snub those who need it most.

A current drought afflicts southern Vermont and New Hampshire, along their borders with Massachusetts, and today it was uncanny how the thunderstorms, moving east to west, avoided the lands that thirsted most. There were flash flood warnings blaring from the weather radio, as we dealt with dust. Here is a radar map of rain from this afternoon.

The impressive storms south of Boston and Albany and over Springfield were moving west to east, as were the string of lesser showers to the north approaching Concord. But most irksome to me was the storm right on the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border, approaching the coast. It was a cluster that had looked hopeful as it entered Vermont in the morning, but “dried up” and vanished from the radar as it crossed over me, and only reappeared and blew up to a big thunderstorm as it neared Portsmouth on the coast. Is that fair?

I know, even as I grouse about the extra work I must do watering my plants, that it is fair. The actions and reactions of nature are not only fair, they are beautiful. They are incredible harmony, and the only reason we complain is because we are not in harmony with the harmony. We have our own specific desires that are blind. For example, I transplanted some wet, cucumber seedlings into dusty soil, and failed to immediately water them, and the next day it was too late; they had withered and watering didn’t revive them. Never in my experience have cucumber seedlings needed to be watered so immediately; this June is “A First”. However I didn’t blame the drought; I blamed my inability to adapt to the “sumptuous variety of New England weather”. The weather itself is fair; what is unfair is our responses to it.

Sunday is suppose to be a Day Of Rest, and therefore I suppose working in my garden makes me a sinner, but I tried to lessen the eventual penalty I must pay by making my work into a sort of worship. Rather than cursing the drought I was praising the Creator for the amazing variety that makes my fingerprints different from all others, and also makes every summer unique. Not that I didn’t hope for rain. I hunched my eyebrows to the west, seeking the cumulus that was building.

Storms can build up from innocent-looking cumulus with surprising speed. In fact the vast expenditure needed to create the Doppler Radar produced images which shocked the indoors meteorologists who lobbied for it, which leads me to a bit of a sidetrack.

Back in those days congress didn’t just print money when they needed it, and they told the indoors meteorologists they needed to cut their budget in some areas before they would fund the expensive Doppler Radar. So what the indoor meteorologists did was to fire hundreds of outdoors weather-observers. They figured it was worth it, for they figured Doppler Radar would allow them to track individual thunderstorms in the manner that individual hurricanes were tracked. But what the Doppler Radar revealed was that there is no such thing as “an individual thunderstorm”. A storm was a “complex” of updrafts and down-bursts, forming “cells” of various types, sometimes fighting each other and sometimes assisting each other. The Doppler Radar revealed that, rather than a swirl like a hurricane that could be tracked, a thunder storm was a pulsating blob that made dividing amoebas look dull: breaking in two or into three, or becoming mega-cells, or vanishing, in a manner which was basically impossible to predict, from indoors. What was needed was outdoors observers, but those good people had been fired to save money. It was sort of funny to watch how the indoors meteorologists tried to save face. They made it sound like they were doing the public a favor by enlisting them as “volunteer” observers, called “spotters”. A job taxpayers once payed for is now done for free, but you get what you pay for. Around here a “spotter” caused complete chaos in early June by thinking a shred of cloud was a tornado. I’d take an old-fashioned outdoors observer any day, as some had decades of experience.

A further disrespect towards the old outdoors observers involves indoors meteorologists “correcting” the records they kept. Dr. James Hanson was notorious for such fudging of facts. I think it was done to make modern “Global Warming” look worse than the murderous heat and drought of 1936, but that gets us into politics, and it is unwise to go there.

I’d do the job, if only the indoors meteorologists would get off their high horses and confess Doppler Radar only proved they were ignorant. They closed hundreds of valuable stations, run by valuable outdoor observers, to get a gadget that basically tells you a thunderstorm is bad after it already is bad. An outdoor observer can do the same. But hell if I’ll do it if the people I do the favor for behave as if they are doing me the favor. The fact of the matter is they are not God, they have no control of the weather, and it is far better to be humble in such a situation than puff your ego on a high horse.

Not that I blame them for liking Doppler Radar. It is a cool gadget. Another cool gadget tells you just when lightning bolts hit, and even when you can expect to hear the thunder. I actually like this particular gadget more than Doppler Radar, for it will inform you the moment a ordinary shower becomes a thunder shower. You can even set it to make an audible click, the moment a nearby cloud first makes a bolt. This gadget produced the map below, as the Doppler Radar produced the map above.

This is a wonderful gadget, because, when you focus in on your local area, it not only shows you where the flash you just saw, arriving in your eyes at the speed-of-light, hit he ground, but also shows you a slowly enlarging circle, expanding at the-speed-of-sound, to tell you when to expect to hear the thunder. However even this gadget has its weakness. As an outdoors observer, engrossed with worshipful weeding of my garden on Sunday, I noticed I was hearing thunder this gadget didn’t admit existed.

The reason I could hear such thunder was obvious to me, although I am no Sherlock Holmes. Not all lightning hits the ground, but such lightning makes thunder. A storm can shoot bolts cloud to cloud, ten or even twenty miles from it’s core. Soft, cloud-to-cloud thunder can be heard by outside observers like me, even when gadgets are deaf.

I was in some ways glad it didn’t rain, as I had to weed the beans, and you can’t weed beans in a wet situation because doing so causes problems with a virus attacking the bean’s leaves. (No, it is not the Corona Virus and no, you don’t need to wear a mask. You simply weed when the leaves are dry).

Although drought may be good for beans when you weed them, after weeding they thirst for water. I had to water some flats of seedlings I intend to soon transplant, even as soft thunder muttered from both the north and south. The carrots and tomatoes were crying out for weeding, but I had to water first. It isn’t fair, but is just is how things are. And I eventually did weed some carrots and all the tomatoes, and also the peppers, as daylight faded and you actually could see the lightning to the north and the lightning to the south, which went along with the soft sky thunder. Yet still we remained dry.

As the late day June sun settled and the mosquitoes came out I decided enough worship was enough, and headed to my front stoop to relax with a worshipful beer. And it was then I felt I became a most blessed outdoors observer. I was witnessing stuff Doppler Radar misses.

Some storm to the south was a little closer than the others. The thunder was still soft, but a few flashes of lightning seemed brighter. And then I noticed, against slow moving higher clouds, speeding scud.

There was hardly a draft down where I sat, but the outflow of distant storms produced a wind, around a thousand feet up, of marvelous speed. (I can’t recall ever seeing scud moving so fast, outside of hurricanes). With an imagination like mine it was easy to see an angel on a speeding horse.

What this outflow did was to uplift a local cloud just enough to make it shower. At first it was just a few big drops, platting here or there, but then it became a soft roar in the crisp June foliage of parched trees, at first far away like a whisper, but then edging and sidling closer, until a brief down-burst hit the stoop I hearkened from.

In India they celebrate a monsoon’s first rain. The evening chorus of songbirds hushed at the approach of a downpour in a drought. It began as a sigh on the very edge of hearing, but became an approaching roar. All became giddy in a way only drought knows. My wife came out and stood beside me as the flooding baptism approached, and then began splatting fat, warm droplets down in a way that raised tiny clouds of the dust it pelted. And then all too soon the sigh faded away through the darkening trees. I looked up through parting clouds and saw the high heavens feathered with sunset’s crimson cirrus.

Through parched trees comes the sigh of marching rain,
And even evening birds bow heads, made mute
With gratitude. The drenched do not complain
For it’s been so dry that sunbeams refute
Green growing, and, as first fat drops pelt
The dirt, small puffs of dust are arising,
And now the sigh surrounds. I once felt
This way when a kiss brought a surprising
End to loneliness. But this shower’s brief
And already the soft sigh slides away
Through dimming evening; sweet mercy’s relief
Fades to memory’s grief, and dripping leaves pray
The way men pray when they confess they lack:
“Oh Lord, come back. Come back. Come back.”

************

P.S.

On Monday we got a mini-monsoon. The heat encouraged a general updraft to form a weak low over southern Maine, which sucked cool and moist maritime air inland and then south towards us, where it clashed with muggy air. At first the showers continued to dry up, as radar showed them approaching, but thunder thumped all around, and finally we got a few more showers. Around sixty miles to our south one locale got four inches and suffered wash-outs, but for the most part we dripped in a delightful summer drizzle. Who would ever think I could delight in drizzle?

LOCAL VIEW –Tadpoles to Toads–

Our heat wave continues. We have been hotter than Florida, at times. Also it is dry as a bone. Each day some thunder grumbles in the distance, but they are small showers and miss us.

I am losing some seedlings in the garden, as I can’t devote as much time to watering as I’d like, and the sprinkler only waters a small patch at a time. I think I can recall some years when the soil has been baked this dry by late August, but I can never recall soil being like powder in June before.

It makes me think we are in for a cold winter. It is odd, but often the places most above normal in July are most below normal by the next January, (I have noticed this because Global Warming Alarmists always point out the places most-above-normal, which makes them like sitting ducks for the ruthless counterpoints of Skeptics, who are highly skilled at pointing out when places that “proved the world was warming” in July seemingly “prove a new Ice Age is coming” by the following February,) (It has happened too many times to mention, but the time that stands out in my mind was a few years back, when the Siberian tundra and taiga baked, and fires raged in the conifers and smoldered in the bone dry sod to such a degree that the smoke was visible from outer space, and smoke’s haze gave Moscow very bad visibility, which of course caused Alarmist hoopla, yet the next winter saw the the same tundra and taiga set a new Northern Hemisphere record for the coldest temperature ever recorded. [nearly minus 90 Fahrenheit; minus 68 Celsius.] This whiplash from above to below normal makes me think that, rather than attempting to water my baked garden, I should be cutting firewood!)

Not that I have time for either watering or sawing. I have to do my taxes. Usually they are due by April 15, but due to the Corona Virus the due date was extended to July 15. So I of course put it off. Don’t lecture me. If you had any idea how busy my life is, you would be on my side. And what side is that? It is the side that states bureaucrats should be put in jail for cluttering the lives of active people with the demand that we waste precious time keeping tedious, nitpicking records.

When I do my taxes I basically face a giant heap of receipts and bank statements and credit card bills, in many cases wrinkled and/or faded by a dashboard’s sunshine and/or stained by coffee. Amazingly, I am adept at putting the deplorable disorder into chronological order and in all the proper stacks and columns, but God knows I have better things to do. Children are crying and my goats are nagging and my seedlings are withering and the ducks, chickens and rabbit demand feeding, and my dog sighs deeply, and also I am a poet and need time to write. But lazy bureaucrats with nothing better to do insist, so I comply.

Actually it is fun, in a strange way, to look at all the receipts and remember all the stuff you hardly noticed doing at the time, in your rush. (Or in my rush, at least.) It becomes obvious to me that bureaucrats are cursed not only because they plague the innocent, but also because they miss so much that is rich and beautiful.

It might be fun to some day be audited, and to then watch the face of the IRS auditor as he gradually woke up to the richness of my life, going through my receipts. Where he looks at a drab screen and clicks a dull keyboard day after day, my receipts hint at a wider world. True, a receipt is not the same as the actual event, in the same way seeing a bear in a nature-documentary does not increase your pulse in the same manner as meeting an actual bear in the actual woods. But a documentary can open your eyes.

For example, the auditor might note a couple of suspicious receipts for things that seem to have nothing to do with running a Childcare; a tiny aquarium dip-net and an adult book about toads. Then the auditor might make the mistake of asking me to explain, for all that is scrawled on those two receipts is “tadpoles to toads.” I’d then lean back and grin and get garrulous; the audit would take days, if the auditor wasn’t careful.

Tadpoles to toads? Well, in the sweltering heat I had to quit my heap of receipts and do my best to continue a theme of one branch of my so-called “curriculum”. My hard-working staff appreciated having fewer hot-and-bothered children in their groups, as I collected some older and more-inventive rascals to go to the nearby flood-control-reservoir in the oppressive heat and humidity, to check up on the tadpoles.

Small kids have a strange mixture of tenderness and heartlessness towards small creatures, one moment ripping legs off to see how an insect responds, and the next cooing terms of endearment to a crippled “pet”. (Sometimes they kill frogs by hugging them). It is a hard job to teach them to respect life, and to teach a great Truth: Sometimes the way to be loving is to not touch. This is especially true concerning blondes, and also tadpoles.

Wood frog tadpoles look a lot like toad tadpoles, and I bored the kids exceedingly by telling them the difference, during the cooler days back in April when the last ice melted and the amphibians awoke. Both wood frogs and toads spend their lives in the woods away from ponds, but the wood frog’s mating music sounds like a cross between a plucked banjo string and a duck, while the toad has a beautiful, long trill. The frog lays eggs as a mass, while the toad lays long strings. The wood frog lays eggs in vernal pools away from a pond’s predators, while a toad lays eggs in the shallowest water where predators seldom go. The children yawned. As far as they were concerned a tadpole was a tadpole.

When the small children get haughty with me I know I likely deserve it; (children have little time for an old man’s garrulous yammering), but one approach I have is to be just as haughty right back at them. I lay it on thick, slapping my forehead and staggering about exclaiming, “Oh! How could you say such a thing! A tadpole is just a tadpole? Incredible! Simply incredible!” The kids find such antics amusing, and then tend to actually listen.

This year I ranted, “You call these piddling things tadpoles? Now, a bullfrog tadpole, that’s something to see, and takes two years to mature. It’s got to swim like a fish, to live so long. These little pathetic black blobs can barely move with their tiny tails; I’m surprised they don’t drown, but they will be turning to frogs in just a few weeks. Better to just call them pollywogs, not tadpoles.”

Our drought created a crisis for the wood frogs, for the vernal pools began drying up. This brought out the compassion in the children. Where they had been mercilessly poking and tweaking the tadpoles just days earlier, all of a sudden they were faced with a mass of squirming tadpoles facing certain death in the final remaining water of an evaporating puddle, and decided to conduct an emergency evacuation to the nearby flood-control-reservoir. Rushing back and forth with small cups of tadpoles kept them busy for most of a hot morning. I cancelled my hike-and-lecture for that morning, for they obviously were having great fun, and also were displaying kindness (and were quite puffed up about how noble they were being.) One boy made a wailing noise like an ambulance as he rushed the small creatures to the pond. I didn’t spoil their party by mentioning what they were likely doing was feeding the bass.

They put the wood frog tadpoles in the shallow water where the toad tadpoles were just starting to appear, and, as the two species look nearly identical, (like black punctuation marks with tails too skimpy to be commas), there was understandable confusion, and they felt, in the following days, that the toad tadpoles were “their” wood frog tadpoles. I didn’t puncture their illusion, as they had slightly more consideration for the creatures by taking ownership, though they still managed to kill a few by scooping them from the water in cupped hands.

Toad pollywogs crowd the shore in amazingly shallow water, at times seeming beached like miniature whales. This made them easy to catch, and I tried to dissuade the kids from “rescuing” them by pushing the tadpoles out into deeper water. Not only did this compassion accidentally smush some of the tiny creatures, but it put them out where fish lurk, and even though toad tadpoles have the same poison adult toads have in their skin, and can kill some fish, other fish either have iron stomachs, or don’t mind dying. In any case the pollywogs wriggle in the slime of algae by the shore. Not only do they eat algae, but algae grows on their skin, and in some weird way having algae grow on them helps them grow faster. Yet, even as I tell the kids all this interesting trivia, I can see the little cartoon thought-balloons above their heads saying, “Too much information” and “Who cares?”

In yesterday’s heat and humidity they cared less than usual about all my talk about toads. All they wanted was to wade, the deeper the better. I stated they could wade up to their thighs, and they tested that limit constantly, and also squatted down to be immersed to their necks, so I became more of a frowning lifeguard demanding they retreat to shallower waters, than a professor of toadism.

Even though I never had to get wet saving anyone, it is surprisingly cooler right next to water in a hot spell, and eventually the cooled children grew bored of getting wet and started to meander down the shoreline, as I trailed along behind. At one point they came rushing back due to seeing a water snake, but it turned out to be the inner tube of a bicycle, that somehow wound up in a remote spot. I didn’t scold them for being fooled. It takes a professor like myself to spot the difference.

They were fascinated by the sunfish-nests just off shore, sandy areas cleared of all algae and protected by a jealous fish. They were puzzled by how few tadpoles there seemed to be, all of a sudden. Then they were grossed-out by what seemed to be lots of fleas, hopping about the shore. But they were not fleas. They were incredibly small baby toads.

We had lucked into wandering the shore during the brief period when toads all rush inland together as a minuscule stampede. Not one toad showed the slightest interest in fleeing us back towards the water. They headed inland even when it involved climbing steep slopes and cliffs. They were so numerous the children could hold four or five in the palm of their hands, despite my instruction that baby toads are too fragile to be picked up.

A toad’s metamorphosis must be amazingly fast, for there were still some tadpoles in the water, yet I only saw a single example of a tadpole in an intermediate phase, with both tail and legs. Perhaps my eyes are less keen. Someone should study the subject. But I did have the brains to not start talking about “metamorphosis” with the kids. They seemed entranced, without needing my help.

I felt I was seeing a sort of verification of my personal philosophy involving children and nature, which seems completely opposed to some socialist views. Socialists seem to feel it is best to herd children into indoctrination centers and to badger them with a guilt which suggests that man hurts nature, and they should never hurt nature by treading on its dirt, and therefore the only moral response to nature is to only experience nature in dark auditoriums via videos.

An odd thought occurred to me, and it was this; A socialist would have a hard time with the relationship between toad tadpoles and algae. They would either see the toad as the bad guy, for eating the algae, or see the algae as the bad guy, for growing on the toad and in a sense “eating” the toad. What is hard to intellectually grasp is that both the toad and the algae benefit, (and they even have the audacity to benefit without obtaining permits from bureaucratic socialists).

In like manner a small-minded socialist shudders at the sight of a child ripping the legs off an ant, or accidentally killing a tadpole, and cannot see how nature could benefit from such an experience. However nature does benefit from the interaction, for in the process the child is awakened to the marvel God has created, and falls in love with nature. Watching the children marvel over the tiny toads made me feel they were becoming people far more likely to preserve a woodland than to tear it down.

I also felt that perhaps I was demonstrating to socialists everywhere that sometimes a small business can do what Big Government cannot. A thousand small, independent neighborhood schools is better than a single vast institution. Having a field trip of several thousand kids on the shore of the flood-control-reservoir would have trampled the experience utterly.

In an odd way it seems to me that socialists, with their love of organization and order, are the ones ripping the legs off little ants.

They fail to see the Light, and therefore are enamored of shadow. And that seems worth a sonnet, before I get back to my taxes.

. SHADOW SONNET

What fools these shadows seem, approaching
The Light with swords drawn, yet all shrinking
The closer they get. The Light’s reproaching
Their arrogance, but they go on thinking
They’ll snuff the Light, dreaming darkness rules.
They think in darkness no one will see
Their plots, but darkness makes them the blind fools.
Without the Light they will simply cease to be.
Without a Creator, the creation can’t
Continue. So it goes. As they persist
The Light reveals their nature. With each rant
They get smaller. With a toddler’s small fist
They approach Light shrinking like shadows at noon.
Worms under rocks shrink from even the moon.

LOCAL VIEW –The Drumbeats Of Drought In New Hampshire–(With Postscript)

In the past I have posted about (or perhaps bragged) about how people in New England do not know what a drought is, nowadays, because, when I was a boy, we had a drought that went on year after year, until Boston was talking about the need for a second reservoir to supplement Quabbin Reservoir in western Massachusetts, because Quabbin was nearly dry, and vanished towns had reappeared on its dry edges. (I’ll skip repeating tales from my boyhood, of illegally fishing and swimming in the Stony Brook Reservoir, except to say they are fond memories.)

I may have to eat my words, for this summer’s drought is becoming the worst single-year drought I can remember, here in Southern New Hampshire. Even the hurricane milling about to our south last week only gave us east winds with a mist in it, and when a front came through and dropped the temperature from 82°F to 72°F with only the slightest sprinkle of rain, I began to wonder if this might be an autumn of fires. They are rare in New England, but have happened.

New England is a fairly wet place, and there are not that many species that are adapted to fires, as there are out west. However I have noticed even the larger lakes are lower. Here is a picture of the shore of Lake Massabesic, which supplies the City of Manchester its water.

That is about an hour east of my Farm-childcare. Twenty minutes west in Peterborough is Noone Falls on the Contoocook River, with a bare trickle flowing over it.

At the Weatherbell Site Joseph D’Aleo has been keeping an eye on the drought, and I lifted these maps from two of his posts.

In actual fact I think there should be a small spot of red further west on the Massachusetts-New Hampshire border to mark my Farm-childcare, because it seems every passing shower has missed us. I have a customer with a rain gauge, and though he only lives a mile and a half away, on several occasions he has received a half inch from a thunder shower, as I got only a trace. This is a bit unusual, as I’m on the east slopes of a hill, and usually get more.

As a consequence a mountain stream that tumbles down from the hill has been reduced to a tiny trickle. I have never seen the likes of it. Here is the amount of water flowing from the flood-control reservoir that blocks that stream. 

(The sticks at the bottom right of the picture are cut by beavers, who are at war with the State Of New Hampshire and constantly attempt to block the pipe.  A man from the State constantly clears it.  My tax dollars at work.)

I worry about the native brook trout that live in the stream. There cannot be much oxygen in the water, with such a slight trickle flowing, and the water is likely getting warm, in the few remaining pools.

What impresses me most is the farm pond, which was bulldozed eight feet deep in clay back in 1967 (before laws about wetlands) so my stepmother’s cows could get their own water even when the hand-dug well went dry. It is spring-fed, and even on dry summers, when the intermittent stream that feeds into the pond goes dry, there usually is a trickle flowing out. The water was clear and clean, and we swum in it. Not this year.

A heron has grown fat, stalking around the shore, for the frogs have no place to hide.  But now children can see what became of their fish hooks, when they ignored me and cast out on the east side. (Those trees came down in the 2008 ice storm, which doesn’t seem that long ago to me, but was before they were born.) (Water usually completely covers the snags.)

This drought has been going on a long time, locally. It even showed in last winter’s precipitation maps. One month the rain would be north of us, and the next south of us. Or east of us, and then west of us. The lawns have gotten crunchy, and last week’s mist only nourished the crabgrass, which sucked up the surface damp and already is dry.

When I scuff through the crispy woods I wonder if this might be the year we see what people in New England saw in 1947, when entire towns burned in southern Maine.

‘The week that Maine burned’

POSTSCRIPT:

I should have mentioned there is one thing that is relishing the drought. It is a small sort of ant that builds nests in impractical places (even the handlebars of bikes) and likely loses a lot of colonies each time it rains, due to floods. This year they have thrived, and last week sudden swarms appeared in all sorts of unlikely places, as some unknown trigger, perhaps the length of the day, brought them out to perform their mating flights.

They have absurdly oversized wings, three times as long as their small bodies, and are rather lousy fliers. It seems to me that rather than attempting to avoid preditors their strategy is to overwhelm with their sheer numbers. They seem to float about, rather than fly, and I can’t say having a cloud of them in your face makes a drought any better. Within an hour or two they are all gone, with only some anthills of dirt remaining to show they were more than an odd dream.

(The last two ant pictures by Marlowe Gautreau).

                 DROUGHT SONNET

Flowers turn their faces from their old friend
And bluest skies seem soured by broken trust.
Balmy breezes fail to heal; What’s mild won’t mend
And even crabgrass yellows in the dust.

The dewless dawn comes begging for a cloud
But once again what’s fair does not seem fair.
What swelled our pride no longer seems so proud
And carefree sunbeams stress our noons with care.

And so it seems all things upon our earth:
Our wealth; our fame; our friends; and our powers
Are dry, and soon are deemed of little worth
If You don’t spill Your mercy on our flowers.

Only the busy ants buzz, and don’t complain,
So come again to thirsty earth, and reign.

LOCAL VIEW –June Graduations’s Long Light–

There is a strange irony in the fact that, on the very first day of summer, the days start getting shorter. It is a reminder. It as if people grieve the end from the start. It is like crying at a wedding, even when you have a sense the marriage is a good one and could last sixty years.

To me this has always seemed a bit stupid. It is like sulking when flowers bloom, because you know they will someday wither.

Don’t get me wrong. There is some wisdom in being detached, like some Yogi on a mountain peak, and in droning out a mantra of “This too will pass.”.  Nothing on this planet was designed to be permanent, including our physical lives. However that doesn’t keep things from being beautiful, and admirable, and worth emulating.

In terms of romance, I always wanted to emulate my Grandfather. He was of a Puritan, Mayflower, upper-class, Brahmin family, and in 1896, when he was eight years old, he came trotting home from school and announced he had met the girl he was going to marry. The elders found the lad amusing, for the girl was from the wrong side of the tracks. However the childhood friendship endured and they did marry, and still were best friends an amazing eighty years later. It was a most beautiful marriage, but like all things on earth it had to end, and a day finally came when my Grandfather awoke alone.

For some reason my Grandfather’s grief struck me very hard, as a poet aged twenty-five, and I fell into a wallow of morbid gloom, seriously thinking about how pointless life was, and how empty all deeds are, when the results of even the most beautiful love-story is death. I wrote a mournful poem about how our good deeds lose their goodness when they cannot keep Love close. One image in that poem has always remained in my mind as an good example of a good deed that looks foolish in the face of death. It was the image of a man climbing the steps of the gallows, brushing his teeth. (You may borrow it, if you chose.)

However at that age my mood was simply too buoyant to remain morbid very long. I might vow to be serious, and never sing again, but as soon as I stepped into the shower I’d find myself singing like a deranged skylark.

June is like stepping into a shower of light, washing the filth of a dark winter away. How can you not sing?

I’m a lot older now, and much less inclined to be buoyant. I’m bitter, because that’s what life does to you, but I’ve the brains to twist that bitterness towards a wry sense of humor, and make it be a breakfast many don’t mind. After all, grapefruit is bitter, is it not?

But when June comes rolling around it is hard for even an old coot like myself to be properly cantankerous. For one thing, in June everyone makes the end of long friendships, and the shattering of communities, into a celebration. They call it “graduation”. It is a time you are kissing good-bye to friends you have known, and it is often a boot from the community you grew up in, (especially if you graduate in a wealthy town and are not fated to be wealthy). Graduation is actually a sort of death, but everyone acts as if dying is wonderful. The young girls at least have the good sense to cry, but the young men are such boobs they think they have escaped schoolmarms, and are free, free, free at last….until the party is over and they face this gruesome thing called, “Getting a job.” Then they see that freedom isn’t free. Years pass, until they wind up an old coot like me, who knows the glory of graduation is akin to a funeral.

Still, the celebrations of “The End” get to my sentimental side. Perhaps it is because kids do not merely graduate from high-school and college, these days. They graduate from junior high, from grade-school, from kindergarten, and my wife even has a sweet event to celebrate the graduation of rug rats from our Daycare. And mothers cry at all these events. And when I see them get teary, I have to turn away, because my own eyes want to begrudge a bit of sympathetic moisture.

A more pragmatic side of myself thinks it is a bunch of fuss and bother. What a waste of time! People should be growing food, hoeing the corn, chopping the wood, getting ready for next winter.

But the detached yogi in me sits back on his mountain peak and contemplates the significance of all these graduations.  Each is an end, and therefore a sort of funeral, but it is also a celebration, because each assumes the after-life will be better. Each graduation is like the funerals that first-century Christians were purported to be: Joyous events, because early Christians were so sure the continuation of life after death was like escaping schoolmarms, and becoming even freer than a teenaged boy on a night he won’t remember.

I walked into the local market a few days ago with my mood uplifted by June and six graduations. I wasn’t singing like I do in the shower, but had been singing in the car on my way to the store. I was happy, but the store’s mood immediately wiped the smile from my face. Everyone in the store was so grim. Not a person wore a smile, except the girl at the register, who was bravely attempting to be cheerful, but losing the battle. As I got my six-pack and waited in line I glanced at the headlines on the papers. (Sometimes a terrorist attack has this sort of sobering effect.) No new atrocity greeted my eye. I figured I’d check the internet when I got home, and then noted people were looking at me with disapproving looks. This seemed odd, so I put on my best disarming smile, but even the poor girl at the register gave me a “I-don’t-know-you” look when I was the only customer who smiled at her and was pleasant. “What the heck?” I thought to myself, as I drove home.

During my ride home I glanced in the rear view mirror and understood one reason people had been regarding me oddly.

During the final hour at the Childcare, when we are basically just waiting for parents to show up, I was showing the children the June-art of making daisy chains. Unbeknownst to me the little girls crowding around to watch had adorned my tough, Aussie, crocodile-hunter hat with a ridiculous bouquet. Flowers were sticking every which ways. However ordinarily that would have been a reason for smiles, if not joshing, at the market. Some other thing was affecting people.

I checked the internet first thing, but there was no fresh terrorist atrocity. Then I checked a weeks worth of snail-mail, (I’ve been out of town), and then dawn abruptly broke on Marblehead.

Many poor folk around here work construction during the summer, and, if they are lucky, work for ski-slopes in the winter, and, because some winters are not all that snowy, they typically fall behind in their bills in the winter, and then catch up in the spring. This is so typical that there is actually a New Hampshire law that keeps the electric companies from cutting off people’s power in the winter, though they can cut off your power if you don’t pay off the bill by the end of April. However recently the old electrical company (PSNH) was taken over by a money-grubber company called “Eversourse”, and they lobbied and were successful, and the politicians had the old law tweaked. Anyone who had ever fallen behind in their bill during the winter would now have to pay a “deposit”, or their power would be turned off. In my case the deposit was $800.00, (combining both the Childcare and my home). For me that is roughly two month’s worth of electricity in the dead of winter. In essence, rather than helping people out by allowing people to fall behind in the winter, Eversourse now wanted that money up front, ahead of time, as a deposit.

I likely sound a bit quaint, but that simply isn’t how things are done in the world of bumpkins. People help each other out when times are rough, and I myself would never have been able to raise five kids if I wasn’t allowed to run up a tab at times. It wasn’t just the local market that saw my tab get alarmingly large, but the doctor and dentist and telephone and propane and electricity saw me running up a tab. However I was honor-bound to pay, and always did pay the tabs, once times got better in the spring. I was grateful to all who had patience, and became a faithful customer to the businesses that treated me so kindly. But perhaps such honor is old-fashioned,  and perhaps Eversourse has run up against people who do not pay their tabs. Or perhaps they are just greedy. In any case, the letter they sent was not what you’d expect, from people who you have faithfully paid your bills to for over 26 years.  They basically gave me 14 days to come up with $800.00 or they would shut off my power. Since I’d been out of town, most of the time had already passed, with their threatening mail sitting in a pile on my desk.  I had to come up with $800.00 in one day, or the power would be shut off at my place of business. (I don’t know about you, but I am self-employed and have to fund my own vacations, so I was not exactly rolling in the dough after five days off.)

Now, I’m sure the stockholders of Eversource want plump dividends, and feel it was very expedient on the part of Eversource to stop allowing poor people to run up tabs during the winter. After all, Eversource only collected 12% interest on that loan. (1% a month). Surely rich fat cats can get better dividends than that, even as poor people get next to nothing on a savings account.

I called up Eversource to raise some hell, but got some sweet girl on the phone who likely is paid $8.00/hour to face the public’s rage, as the fat-cats hide like the cowards they are. I decided to dump all my spleen in the scuppers, and just be polite, as if I was spiritual and not hopping mad and thinking very unspiritual thoughts. It worked. She was so glad to talk with a nice, polite person she became very nice in return, and we has a good talk.

When I said I was baffled by how I was being treated she said Eversourse only wanted to bully people into automatic payments. In fact the only way to avoid having my power cut off, (besides coming up with $800.00 I don’t have),  was to agree to have my electricity bill automatically removed from my bank account. This was Eversource’s way of making sure they got paid on time, next winter. Never mind that I might not have much money when the sun gets low. They came first. The doctor, dentist, market, propane and telephone could all wait.

I agreed to have my bills deducted from my business account. But I sure don’t feel like a valued customer. And I intend to be petty, and get even. If push comes to shove I will simply instruct the bank to stop the automatic payments next November. By law, they still cannot shut off my power until April. And then, when they ask me for a huge deposit next April, I will be shifting to a new supplier. (There are actually other electric companies that use the same wires, and are slightly cheaper.) (They have been pestering me to switch for years, but I was a loyal customer…of PSNH, I suppose; definitely not Eversource…any more.)

In fact I’d switch today, but someone told me Eversource doesn’t really want to have residential customers, and actually wants to alienate them, and force them to switch, so they can focus on the big factories and corporations. That is where the money is, and that is where those ruled by greed (and not community and family values) go, like pigs to their sty. Therefore I will not switch today, because a nonspiritual side of me wants to declare war, and be petty, (and I promise you I will derive great pleasure from being uncooperative).

Judging from the faces in the line at the local market, I am not the only disgruntled bumpkin. It is not anything spoken, but rather is a hardness in faces. A lot of dawning is going on upon a lot of Marbleheads. A lot of people feel treated like trash, and want to graduate from that class. The stock-holders in Eversource need to ponder whether slightly larger dividends are worth stirring up a hornet’s nest.

I’ve talked with people who think local folk are rubes, because they only care for their neighbors, while “Internationalists” care for everyone. However that is just big talk, like a roaring drunk claiming he loves everyone, when he has abandoned his wife and children for a bender. He will talk differently in the morning, and so will the so-called “Internationalists.” It will be a bit of hangover for them to realize they cared most for dividends, and not the neighbors rubes care for. Charity begins at home.

America was made, and remains full of, people who want to graduate. They do not want to remain in the class they are. If the rich should decide they want to “keep people in their place” they will be  preventing graduation, and I fear there will be hell to pay.

However that is gloomy talk for June, and likely due to the fact I own a part of myself that is bitter and old. It is constantly at war with a part of myself that never gets old, and enthuses in June, even though it knows sunshine has its price.

When I was young the sun shone much more than it does now. This is not merely the rose-colored spectacles of age looking backwards. It is a meteorological fact, and shows up in the degree of drought we faced. The 1960’s saw year after year of drought.

I could tell some good tales about growing up in that drought, about how low the reservoir I illegally fished in got, and about the roaring brush fire I started at age twelve.  In fact, I may do so, some night in the near future, for we currently in a drought that reminds me of my boyhood.

However the drought of my boyhood was back in down-to-earth times, when white-collar people could relate to poor blue-collar folk just trying to get by. Back then Americans stood united as basically ordinary people all trying to graduate together. Then times changed. A so-called “1%” decided their income mattered more. They decided it was good to profit by impoverishing the poor. They only wanted sunshine, but it created a drought.

This bothers me. The other night I was kept from sleep, thinking about the drought of compassion, and was still awake after midnight, when I started to notice the flicker of lightning.  Then, as I barely dozed, I began to hear the faint drum of distant thunder.  Then I dipped more deeply, and was abruptly awoken by a loud crash. Then I listened to the delicious sound of drought-relieving rains slowly approaching through the summer leaves.

In my sleepy state I wondered if the drought caused by the 1% hogging sunshine for themselves might also be ended by thunder.

“What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”

November 13, 1787   Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith