Life's requirements

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Charles Kingsley

I don’t want politicians who are 'above politics,' any more then I want a plumber who's 'above toilets'.'
— Ta-Nahesi Coates

Why yes, you can video police

From this article: U.S. Department of Justice Slaps Baltimore Police Over Right to Record Issue

"On Monday, the Department of Justice slapped the Baltimore Police Department with another letter, condemning it for writing such a vague general order and for allowing the harassment to continue.

"It is a very impressive read. Eleven pages of case citations and Constitutional clarifications. One of the most solid efforts from the federal government in protecting the rights of citizens to record police."

From the Letter from the U.S. Attorney General comes these tidbits, as quoted in the article above:

No individual is required to display 'press credentials' in order to exercise his/her right to observe, photograph, or video record police activity taking place in an area accessible to, or within view of, the general public.

And this:

In addition, policies should prohibit more subtle actions that may nonetheless infringe upon individuals’ First Amendment rights. Officers should be advised not to threaten, intimidate, or otherwise discourage an individual from recording police officer enforcement activities or intentionally block or obstruct cameras or recording devices.

The millstones of the gods grind slowly
but they grind exceeding fine.

What does the economy look like?

"Markets do everything best – managing business and systemic risk, innovating, investing, organising executive reward – without the intervention of the supposed dead hand of the state and without any acknowledgement of wider social obligations." — A quote from The Guardian as part of an article that answers the second question.

Two questions:

1) If it works, what is it supposed to look like? How does the economy look and function?
2) Does that in any way match what the economy looks like right now?

Anarchists?

The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn’t; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists.
— G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

When there is fear, there is tyranny

Found on a survivalist blog:
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

Really?
When the government fears the people, there is tyranny. DHS/TSA for example.

Tyranny comes when there is fear in a relationship. Liberty comes when both sides have a clear understanding of each other, and agree to compromises necessary. Tyranny comes from fear, as one side, either the government or the people, tries to bludgeon the other side into submission.


The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
And the vigilance must also include a mirror.

WTF? Workers = Consumers?

Pundits have an incredible ability to segment information, separating out bits of data into separate categories. They see people or events as discreet bits of information, to be categorized and sorted. This is useful for many things. Scholarly analysis is one of them.

However, not for a lot of real life analysis. For example:

It was with much astonishment on my part to watch a selection of economic pundits discuss their personal confusion over the fact that consumer confidence was down. Those pundits were completely and totally flabbergasted, their eyes wide or eyebrows up with astonishment, their words spoken in tones of shock and disbelief. What piece of information caused this mental shakeup?

The statement that workers and consumers were one and the same, and the loss of jobs meant the loss of ability to consume.

You cannot get someone to understand a foreign language by shouting.

A friend sent me a link to a marvelous article: What if a collapse happened and nobody noticed? I agree with the beginning, about what a collapse looks like. It's awesome. You should read it. I stopped agreeing when the author started blaming Peak Oil. It's easy to blame an outside force. It's easy to blame "others". It's a method used by leaders for millenia: when internal troubles can't be solved, attack someone "outside", someone "not us". Change the focus, at least until the leaders are out of power, or dead. Reminds me of Louis Whatsizname of France, and "after me, the deluge."

What I see as the current political/economic problem is an inability to see that a program doesn't work. I don't care if it's a low-level after school program started by the local women's club, or international economic policy. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. There are those who still claim trickle-down works, except for those nasty people who get in its way. In other words, in real life, it *does* *not* *work*. Get over it and move on. Austerity programs are not working. So what will? There are a lot of ideas getting tossed around. Some ideas work locally, some in larger regions, some internationally. No one idea works for all things, although people in power try to make it so. "Don't force it. Use a bigger hammer."

Unfortunately, far too many people are emotionally invested in their own ideas, and will *not* change, even in the face of creeping collapse. Too many people invested in the belief that the unemployed are lazy, no-good, and all they have to do is find a job. These true believers can't seem to see there are no jobs. They point to "see, that one company is hiring 50 people" and miss the fact that *500* people applied. People complain about "all that money being spent on space" and fail to see that the jobs, the manufacturing of equipment and parts, are *here* on this planet. There are no piles of Franklins on the Moon, Cassini does not carry gold as cargo. The area around Cape Canaveral is facing severely increasing unemployment, now that those who worked on Space Shuttle launches are unemployed. Those in charge cut that program as an austerity measure, thus decreasing those paying taxes: those no longer working for NASA, those families no longer buying at local stores, those stores that close because few are buying, those who used to be store employees in their turn not buying at other stores. None of them are now paying taxes, thus increasing the need for more austerity. Sounds like a nasty spiral down, doesn't it?

The article's statement "Of course they could just as easily come clean with all this..." Dude! What world are you living in? You seem to think all people in positions of power even recognize there's a problem. You assume they are all deliberately withholding information, when in fact they are blindly hanging on to beliefs that do not reflect the real world. It falls in the "all you have to do is..." thinking, which is just as bad as "of course it works, if people would stop interfering." It's not malice, at least not for most of them. It's just plain old ordinary willful blindness. We all suffer from it in various forms.

I have blind spots that I'm willing to have exposed, but only if the person exposing them shows me the numbers/data as they are *in* *real* *life*, not what they should be under ideal circumstances. We are humans, not ideals.


You cannot get someone to understand a foreign language by shouting.
You cannot solve a problem if you won't see the current "solution" doesn't work.

Political perspective? True then, true now

I created this post in 2010, and then forgot to publish it. I find the arguments as appropriate now as they were two years ago.

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I have added a certain amount of emphasis

There are a number things the public "knows" as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.
Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:

1. President Obama tripled the deficit.
   Reality: Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first reduced that to $1.29 trillion.
2. President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
   Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the "stimulus" was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.
3. President Obama bailed out the banks.
   Reality: While many people conflate the "stimulus" with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be "non-reviewable by any court or any agency.") The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.
4. The stimulus didn't work.
   Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.
5. Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
   Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.
6. Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
   Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.
7. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is "going broke," people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
   Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.
8. Government spending takes money out of the economy.
   Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on "welfare" and "foreign aid" when that is only a small part of the government's budget.

This stuff really matters.
If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.
If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn't work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.
If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse. And on it goes.

Trust

How hard it is, sometimes, to trust the evidence of one's senses! How reluctantly the mind consents to reality.
   —Norman Douglas


How some things never change.

I'm Where? Doing What?

I'm in Albany, NY, enjoying(?) my first winter with snow. I started the year in Granada Hills, in warm sunny southern California. Sunny southern California, where we keep our snow sensibly on the mountains, admiring it from a distance, or visiting it occasionally to ski.Then a pack-n-move my stuff to my mother's, and my housemates to Lancaster. A short side trip to my mother's to help after her knee replacement surgery. Thence to Albany, totally unplanned, to be company to my friend jan while he deals with chemo.

So here I am. Winter. Snow. What can I say? It's gorgeous.



Standing on the front porch.

Real Measure of Wealth

The real measure of your wealth is how much you would be worth if you lost all your money.
    —Unknown

I guess I will find out. I just filed for bankruptcy.

Wow. Time flies

  Packing.

  Taking the cats out of the boxes...
  packing.


  Moving.

  House
                Neighbors

  Unpacking with supervision. Baby was NOT happy about the move.

First signs of making it home: a rug. 

  A little bit at a time.

Garage is starting to look a bit full.  

  The hammer I get...
But an ovenmitt?

Bethie's foxes.  
And empty boxes.  

We found a place!

We have found a place in Lancaster, that meets all specified requirements. We realized much too late we didn't specify "close". It's a drive of an hour and a half back to the valley where we all work. Oh well. It's ours and we can move.

And I'm still packing.

Part of us is moved

Chaos reigns. *gah*

Because my housemates and I are having a problem finding a place that holds all the stuff, the creatures, the stuff, the equipment and tools, the stuff for which we have no name, at a price we can all manage, I packed my stuff up and moved it all to my mother's. Her house is paid for.

My brother Roger came down the day we moved the storage bin and helped put all the pieces together. That's after showing up early in the morning and helping pack up about 140 bankers boxes of my stuff. (I'm painfully organized and have my stuff in same-sized boxes so they stack neatly.) (why, yes, I do have a neat desk, why do you ask?)

Unpacking bin, chasing the cats off the boxes and out of the bin, disassembling bin, frightening the cats, packing the trailer, chasing cats off the boxes, tying things down, checking one last time for cats, tossing two cats out of the van, and closing up shop, took a good chunk out of one day.

Following morning, checked again for cats, and headed out. A four hour drive later, we arrive at my mother's. Then came the fun part of unpacking all the... wait, those boxes slid off and landed on the trailer floor upside down. Ohshit, what broke? Nothing? Just paper and books and clothes, just a mess. Ok, I don't have to kill anybody.

I gave strict instructions on how all this was to be packed and... guys, you're not listening to me as I'm yelling at you. *sigh* They're all working to unpack and get set up. I guess I have to go help.

Storage bin set up.

Boxes transferred to the back patio pending packing into the bin.

My mother and Beth sat on the patio and supervised. That's Beth, wielding the wrench.

And then Mom winced when she realized I wasn't going to immediately move everything into that bin. Mom, it's a big steel container that is no longer shaded by trees. Until I get insulation on it, anything I put in there is going to melt.

Everything offloaded. Everything set up. Everybody headed out for home. Job well done.

This isn't one of my better writings, but I be tired.

We're moving

The first week in March, my housemates and I were notified the owner of our property had sold it, and we had 30 days to pack and move.

Yeah right. Like that was going to happen. It finally dawned on all concerned, including the new owner, that packing up a three bedroom, huge office, really old-fashioned kitchen, a double-car garage full of stuff, a 50foot by 15 foot workshop full of parts and equipment for an electrician and handyman, a 50foot by 35 foot storage building full of several hundred video arcade games and assorted parts, a two-stall and tack room barn full of the overflow from everything else, as well as numerous sheds, pieces of equipment, lumber, and miscellaneous bits and pieces scattered over the 3.5 acre lot, while hunting down a new place, or places, to hold all this, while also holding down jobs enough to pay for it all, was not something that could be done in 30 days.

So they gave us 60 more. We have until the end of June to do all of the above. Fun times.

Since I'm the one with the most part-time of jobs, and the best packer, I'm packing. And packing, and packing, and... do we really need to keep all five of these? Yes? Ok.... and packing and packing.

Idaho Falls? I'm in Idaho Falls?

Well, I was. Taking a break from insanity, I went to Idaho Falls to visit a friend. Eighteen hours by bus, leaving late in the afternoon, arriving at noon. When I got out at the 2am stop, I realized something. There was snow on the ground. Yes, intellectually I knew there was snow in Utah and Idaho in the winter. But I'm from Los Angeles. We keep our snow sensibly on the mountains, and go visit it from time to time. We don't live in it.

Snow there was. I got some great pictures of snowy mountains and houses and reflections in the window of the passengers on the bus. My camera was of the type that sucked its lens back in when turned off, so having an attachable filter was a non-starter. But the pictures remind me of the trip. They don't have to be shared. [*sniff*]

So for a week, I stayed in Idaho Falls, where the temperature never got above freezing. The house was warm, the company marvelous, the futon couch comfy if difficult to get out of. I was introduced by my host and his two sons to anime. I enjoyed it very much. It snowed several times, but nothing substantial. Enough to make snow angels. I could ask no more.

My host, Bob, took me on a tour of the highlights of Idaho Falls, which took all of an afternoon. I did get some pictures of the Falls of Idaho Falls, which were lovely all frozen over. I also meandered around the neighborhood taking pictures. [Here]I found when I got home that I had managed to gather a collection of prints of various creatures meandering thru the snow. Find them here.

On Sunday, Bob and I took off fairly early for Yellowstone. It was quite likely Yellowstone was closed, but since I was in the area, I wanted to go as far as I could. So off we went, thru the Grand Tetons and the snow. I took five thousand pictures, well, ok, 4,990, of pine trees covered in snow, gorgeous vistas as we topped a hill, trees covered in snow, and lakes and rivers and mountains and trees covered in snow.

Jackson, WY, was fun. Touristy, but fun. We did in fact make it all the way to the south entrance of Yellowstone, which was closed. But driving the roads of the Grand Tetons National Forest with nobody else on the road was a delight. I got a great example of how to drive on ice and snow without having to flinch about running into someone else. It was a tad slippery.

We took the long 'way round, coming in to Jackson. We took 26 to 89, then north thru Jackson. When we came home, the GPS said the shorter route was over Teton Pass. I don't do really well on twisty mountain roads, but I was fine with Teton Pass. I couldn't see over the side because the snow had been piled at least 8 feet high. Part way up the pass, Bob flipped a switch, saying 4-wheel drive is for wusses, but in this case it might be wise. I gave him a startled look and asked, have we been driving without it all along? Yup, said Bob.  Swell.

We did stop sliding around so much, which was good in the face of oncoming traffic. There were a couple of places where the two lanes, one each way, got very... shall we say, friendly. Fortunately when we went around the "friendlier" corners, there was no oncoming traffic. One of the niftier sights along the pass was the crowd of skiers along the side of the road. The vans were letting them off there, and were going to pick the skiers at the bottom of the hill.

The following day, my day of departure, the trees were covered in frost crystals. None of the pictures I took captured the incredibleness of trees seemingly covered in diamond crystals. Ohmy it was gorgeous.

At noon, I got back on the bus, headed south. My days of frost and snow were over.

A Christmas to remember!

It was a season to remember! Beth ran into a high school chum, married, with three kids, in a bit of a bind. Housing was an issue, as the chum was running into problems with his insurance company with regards to payment for his house that burned down. It looked like the family would be spending Christmas in a homeless shelter. So Beth invited them to stay in the "big room" out back. Kenny moved in with his girlfriend, Beth, Tom and I all cleaned the place up, and the family moved in the first part of December.

All went well, for about three days.

December turned out to be the second wettest since recordkeeping started in 1887. This compounded a problem we didn't know we had. Apparently the septic tank had never been drained in all its fifty year existence. We found this out when it backed up into the only shower in the house. And stayed.

The landlord sent out the plumber, as always. The plumber got the rooter machine out, to once again remove the tree roots from the main drain. Except... it didn't help. That's when we found the entire system was full, and with all the rain, wasn't draining. And no one knew where the clean-out was. The landlord called the previous owner trying to locate it. No luck. Meanwhile, we have no shower. For three weeks, we have no shower. There are now six adults and three teens living on the property, with no shower. I thank all the Powers that it was December and not July. Several of us made repeated visits to friends and family to use their showers.

A plumber with the proper tools was located just after Christmas and the two-weeks-without-shower mark had been passed. There was much fidding around with equipment and on December 31. The septic tank was unburied late in the afternoon, thus rendering our front yard more of a wasteland than usual. No one was going to come out on January 1, or on Sunday, January 2.

And then, one of the people living out back died two days before Christmas of complications of alcoholism. In the back yard. The family thereof descended upon us, with weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And raiding of the refrigerator, eating anay and everybody's food without replacing it, using every pot and pan we collectively had and not washing the dishes. Charming. Not. Washing the dishes was taken as permission to get them dirty again, and eating what little still remained in the fridge.

Meanwhile, this poor family of five is living in a house with no shower, only one toilet still working, the back bathroom sink only having cold water, the kitchen sink piled with dishes, with all these crazy people mourning the dead guy while simultaneously deciding they should be cheerful "for the kids" for Christmas. The family had continued negotiations with their insurance company, and a few lawyers, and it looked like they were going to be able to move into their new place in January.

January 3 dawned bright and clear. The family in the "big room" moved out so fast you could hear the thunderclap of the air closing in behind them. I'm sure they wished they had stayed in a homeless shelter. It would have been less crazy. Mid-day, the septic tank company showed up, drained what they said was probably 50 years' worth of stuff, and we had the shower and second toilet back in operation. The first toilet kept working, and we found out it had been an add-on, and so drained into a different septic tank. The family of the dead guy decamped, including the remaining resident out back, leaving the three of us alone in the house once more.


Happy New Year!

My brother died Saturday.

I came home from a conference on Saturday. Shortly thereafter, I got a phone call from my mother, giving me the news that my younger brother died in his sleep Saturday. Not the kind of news one wants to hear. He was 46, and having some medical issues, but not anything that we expected to do this.

I wrote the news on my facebook page. Support flowed from all over. It was very comforting. My sister-in-law posted, in part:
one can't help but be reminded of how fragile and precious life is. Tomorrows are not guaranteed.

My reply:
Tomorrows are guaranteed, but not necessarily in this life. The bodies we are given are strong beyond belief, fragile beyond imagining. We learn, we teach, we grow. And each in our own turn, we leave. The time we have here is precious. Cherish what you learn. Give freely what you can teach. Hold dear in your heart what you love.

Rest in peace, Jeff.

Take Down...and pack up

Click any image for larger version

<< FIRST IN SERIES

Once the balloon is on the ground, it's time to fold it up and take it home.


The Bembel Has Landed



Starting to deflate,
basket being
tipped over.









Lots of neighbors getting into the act!






And down it comes!





Balloon neatly down, and the pilot crawls out.

Squeezing the life...I mean air,
out of the balloon so it can be packed.






Squeezed and bundled up.
Everyone gets
into the act.


Walter, on the left
in the "Balloon Team" vest,
gets into the act.













This is why, immediately after, I went out to buy a real camera. I couldn't download the pics from my itty bitty cellphone camera fast enough to clear space for the next pic in this sequence. It was the utterly adorable collection of neighborhood kids, holding up the balloon and stuffing it into its travel sack. And then leaping enthusiastically on the sack to force out the last of the air.



Next day, another chance to catch
a balloon getting stuffed.
Balloon starting to deflate.


















Deflating and coming down.






You can see the handle of the bembel (wine pitcher),
about to get flattened under the rest of the balloon.















Balloon down, basket tipped over.




Balloon folded up,
ready to be stuffed in its travel sack.










The travel sack is far sturdier than the fabric of the balloon, so the sack is dragged to the next segment of the balloon to be stuffed. It's a rather energetic process.


If you're not careful, you'll get
stuffed into the sack along with the balloon.



Why yes, I almost got stuffed in with the balloon. About all the sympathy you'll get is the team telling you when the balloon will be unpacked next. If you're "packed" on the last day of flight, they cheerily tell you that the next time will be back in Germany.





Balloon all stuffed in its sack,
ready to be laced up and sat on. Sat on?







Yup. Sat on.
Squeezing the last of the air out.






Getting ready to hoist the basket into the truck.
Having a few strong backs around helps the process!







Basket's in the truck! Yay!







Securing the basket, securing the team flag!





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