Left Trumansburg yesterday for our last week in the Finger Lakes. We're near Geneva, NY at the north end of Seneca Lake. To get to the cottage, we had to drive down a long dirt road (with speed bumps).

In what I take as a good sign, a woodchuck just showed up in the backyard. Didn't really expect to see one here. Mitzi says an eagle just flew by. I saw a large shape but didn't see it long enough to identify it.

This place doesn't have fiber, but it does have decent internet. About the same as back home, though upload speeds are a bit lower.

We drove up 96 yesterday, and it was part of the route of a half(?) Ironman competition. A lot of folks in Geneva for that event, but most of them were in a park down by the lake. We didn't have any problem finding parking and getting lunch.

The cottage is large and fairly comfortable, but it's got its quirks. One small bathroom. There's a small dock, but the stairs seem rickety and the handrails are painted black, so I couldn't use them to go down the steps last night, too hot to touch. May try it again this morning.

Trying, but mostly failing, to keep the world from intruding. Seems to be hanging over our heads like the clouds in the photo. Just have to keep breathing, I guess. Anyway, six more days here then back on the road. Heading back to Florida where the insanity "goes to eleven."

So I've got that to look forward to.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:23 Monday, 15 July 2024

Picked a couple of pounds of blueberries yesterday. It was a pleasant experience. There was only one other family in the field with us, no bugs to speak of, plenty of berries and it wasn't hot. The sun was kind of intense, but there was a breeze.

The farm store offered a range of baked goods, jams and jellies. I had a cookie concoction consisting of an oatmeal cookie with white chocolate chips (Yes, I know. It's not "chocolate."), and a lemon glaze. I'm counting on the fiber and protein content of the oatmeal making it "healthy," though I know that's just wishful thinking.

We stopped by a former firehouse in Burdett, NY that has been converted to kind of an indoor farmer's market. All local or regional products. Very pricey, but it supports local agriculture. Bought some mushrooms, a steak and an onion. Dinner tonight.

ars technica has a piece on sea level rise in the southeast. The St Johns Riverkeeper, Lisa Rinamen is quoted in it. I know Lisa and I support the St Johns and Matanzas riverkeepers. None of this is really a surprise, apart perhaps from the increasing rate, though even that was anticipated by some. Historically, sea level rise occurs in pulses, periods of rapid rise.

But we keep shoveling taxpayer money into the sea. At best, it might buy time, but we waste that time and that money by doing nothing meaningful to address the risk. But Florida faces so many risks that it's doing nothing about that it's hard to single out sea level rise.

What's going to happen to the housing market when you can't get insurance, and therefore can't get a mortgage? We're one major hurricane away from an insurance industry collapse. We will learn just how "effective" those "reforms" the legislature enacted will be. They chiefly make it easier for insurance companies to deny claims, or under-compensate claims, and make it harder to sue insurance companies.

Then there's the heat, which I guess we're just going to ignore.

And the generation of Republican environmental stewardship that led to things like the Piney Point environmental disaster. There's more where that came from, as the saying goes.

They tell us they don't get much snow around here anymore. My kids and grandkids are all in Florida, or I'd seriously consider, I mean seriously consider pulling up stakes and moving up here. Taxes are higher. Prices are higher. Much of rural upstate New York can be Trump country, but it feels less rabid than Florida. The state has the opposite problem from Florida with a seemingly permanent Democratic majority in the legislature because of NYC, but the governor's office flips back and forth from time to time. This state isn't laser-focused on culture war issues and the governor's political ambitions.

And the views. I asked the guy at the blueberry farm if he kind of takes the scenery for granted. He's lived here all his life, so he allowed that he probably does. I don't know how long it'd take before I stopped being moved by it. Florida is claustrophobic, which may go some way toward explaining why it's so insane. Even in "rural" Florida, it's mostly just flat. There are no expansive vistas that can open your mind and your heart. Just the heat, the humidity, the mosquitoes, the gators and all the invasive exotic pets, and the selfish cruelty of its Republican ruling class.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:09 Saturday, 13 July 2024

Mitzi spotted this on the wall this morning. I took the opportunity to play with the TG-6. I haven't practiced very much using the macro feature. This is a single frame using the flash. I took some stacked images using the LED lamp, but I thought this one showed the eyes a bit better.

Anyway, not a great photo, but something I don't see very often at home.

Rained quite a bit yesterday, but we got our little hike in early. I guess we're picking blueberries today. Maybe. Well, Mitzi is anyway.

We watched the utterly forgettable Family Plan on Apple TV+ last night. They have some kind of Samsung TV streaming service on the smart TV here, and we've watched some of its programming. It's pretty generic, decade or more older reality TV stuff, a couple of movie channels that seem to play the same old movies over and over. So I've been streaming movies from my iPhone via AirPlay.

We watched The Good German the night before, before I knew George Clooney was adding his voice to the cacophony of chaos.

The Good German deals with, as a plot element, Operation Paper Clip. In the movie, a file Clooney is looking for mentions that the contents were moved to Operation Overcast. I hadn't heard of that before, so I wondered if it was a fictional creation, or something real. Turns out, was the official name of Operation Paperclip, which was something that emerged because of all the paperclips holding all the dossiers together.

Anyway, looking into that led me to Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, by Annie Jacobsen. That's available on Kindle Unlimited, so I've started that book. I was somewhat aware of the effort to enlist former Nazi scientists in American research efforts after the war, but I wasn't aware of the extent of it, mostly Von Braun and the rocket people. It was far more extensive than that, and involved some pretty unsavory people.

(Anecdotally, one of the gunners mate (missiles) techs aboard BAINBRIDGE (CGN-25, not the DDG) told me that the launcher logic sequencer for the Mk 10 launcher was designed by a former German scientist or engineer. He supposedly had a breakdown or went nuts after designing it, because it was so complex. No idea if there's anything to that story, but it stayed with me.)

Before getting into the Paperclip book, I went looking for something in my Apple Books collection, and started reading The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany 1944-45, by Ian Kershaw.

So I have three books going right now, Heather Cox Richardson's, Jacobsen's and Kershaw's.

They are all kind of related in the sense that I'm trying to understand how supposedly good people can be persuaded to do horrible things, go on to do them with great efficiency, and how, after a conflict, we can look the other way and do business with people who did horrible things. Also, how people who did horrible things are sometimes remediated into being somehow "respectable" people. This also speaks to the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee, "heritage not hate," and so on.

Everything is contingent, I guess.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:19 Friday, 12 July 2024

It was a short hike, but it was lovely. Since the gorge is right in the middle of town, it gets a lot of traffic. A lot of steps, but otherwise easy.

We stuck around and had lunch at the Moosewood vegetarian/vegan restaurant. I had a nice black bean burger.

We stopped by the Ithaca town hall to see if the clerk that issued us our marriage license still worked there. She does not, she retired about five years ago. The woman we spoke to sees her often and will let her know we stopped by. When we received our marriage certificate, the clerk had enclosed a very nice note and invited us to stop by anytime we were in town. We've been to Ithaca many times since then, but never really made the time to drop by. Today we did.

It's been cloudy and overcast most of the day. On the ride home we could see rain off in the distance. Even cloudy, it's beautiful.

I suppose I could come to take these vistas for granted again eventually, but for now they continue to enthrall. There's so much ugliness in the world, I'm grateful for the beauty that nature offers.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 14:25 Thursday, 11 July 2024

We hiked Buttermilk Falls this morning. Got there before 9:00 am, which meant we encountered fewer people on the trail.

It's only about three quarters of a mile each way, but about 463 feet of elevation gain. This was much easier than Treman, but still challenging. I'm getting better with the trekking poles, and I'm certain it would have been far harder without them.

After the hike we had a picnic lunch at the lower falls in the shade, enjoying the breeze. At home it was 93°F with a heat index over 100°F. I thought about that as I lay on the bench of the picnic table, staring up at the branches over my head.

I love New York.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 13:01 Monday, 8 July 2024

Japanese beetles are an invasive species that I often see when we're here in New York. They are photogenic, with their color and metallic sheen; but they're pests. This was on the Cornell campus. I brought along the little Panasonic Lumix LX7.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:04 Saturday, 6 July 2024

The other morning, Mitzi and I went and wandered through the Henry A. Smith Woods. The kids and the younger woman were just coming out of the woods as we arrived. The older woman and the dog were walking along the road, and I gather the kids wanted to pet the dog. Perhaps the two women know each other, I don't know.

I seldom take pictures of people intentionally. I had the Stylus 1s with me, so this is at a comfortable distance with the 300mm effective focal length. I just found it charming and colorful, and it's one of the nice things about visiting here.

The woods were very nice as well.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:53 Saturday, 6 July 2024

We took a walk on the campus of Cornell University yesterday, and this photo caught my eye. In Florida, Gov DeSantis and his white supremacist lackeys have banned such efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion. They don't want anything to interfere with their efforts to uphold and maintain white christian supremacy in Florida. The people reflected in this sign are "others" in Florida. "Special interests," because we're all supposedly "already equal."

Florida used to be two states, one for the privileged and the other, simply ignored. Now the other is attacked, demonized, and targeted. This is the result of the steady rightward drift of the Republican Party of Florida. A dynamic that was set in motion by gerrymandering, where the politically ambitious must run as a Republican to attain elected office; and in a state of closed primaries, the election is decided in the primary where the most motivated voters are the most extreme ones.

In a primary, the way to win is to be more "Republican" or "conservative" than your opponent. This drives the entire party further and further to the right. It becomes more and more extreme. Issues are reduced to culture war matters. Genuine problems and challenges are ignored, or placed in a culture war context, which is why Florida's statutes now omit any reference to the words "climate change."

All people possess the potential for cruelty, violence and hatred. It has generally been the role of good leadership to move people away from those tendencies. In Florida, Republicans lead citizens toward them. Lead them astray.

Anyway, the sign leapt out at me because it was refreshing. A center that offers resources for who aren't members of the white, christian majority, or plurality. I'm not certain of the demographic makeup of Cornell. I don't know how well the university performs this function. I just know it wouldn't even be permitted in Florida.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:27 Saturday, 6 July 2024

And I'm not talking about an officer in the PRC navy.

Anyway, took that the day before yesterday. We spent most of yesterday hanging around the house. We visited a local apiary with a unique retail store in the middle of a field. Mitzi browsed the merchandise while I chatted with one of the owners about beekeeping, something my Uncle John did and I helped on occasion.

This is not a pleasant vacation. When we often read of feelings of "existential dread," it's almost a cliché. It feels all too real now, underscored by an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness.

It's like we can all see what's coming, it's horrible, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. Because, well, life goes on. That is, until it doesn't anymore.

There are genuinely horrible people who are looking forward to taking power in January, and who are telling us all the things they're going to do, which are frightening. What is absolutely terrifying, though, are all the things they're going to do that they're saying nothing about now.

What I find perversely encouraging is that the larger planetary crisis will swallow the political one. In some ways, it'll be a pleasure watching these selfish, mean and bitter people grapple with something they don't understand as it robs them of all the wealth and power they will briefly control.

The suffering inflicted by nature will be on a far greater scale, if nearly as inequitable.

We can be certain that there will be large-scale geo-engineering efforts undertaken, confidently sold to us by tech bros, which will fail spectacularly and yet offer some perverse satisfaction in watching them do so, assuming I live that long.

Anyway, enjoy your summer. Probably the last one you'll be able to.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:28 Friday, 5 July 2024

I recalled that Treman was challenging, but we hadn't done the whole thing in years. I told Mitzi that when we got back to the car I was going to write a note about our experience so we wouldn't forget the next time, if there ever is one.

When we discussed making the hike, I suggested that we do the gorge trail first, as the rim trail was likely to be "easier." Three years ago, at a different gorge, Mitzi's daughter and son-in-law were with us. After hiking down the gorge we had the two young people hike back up the rim trail to collect the car and come down and get us. We had looked at the rim trail and it began with a long series of steps and said, "Nope!"

This was my first hike with trekking poles. I wore the Cotton Carrier G3 on my chest with the E-M1X on it. It's a large body for micro four-thirds, and it does obscure your view at your feet. If I hadn't had the trekking poles I doubt I could have completed the hike, and I'm certain I'd have fallen on more than one occasion.

The hike was glorious going down into the gorge. New York has had a decent amount of rainfall, I haven't checked, perhaps more than "normal" due to our new climate, so all the falls were running with impressive torrents for early summer. The temperature was low to moderate, I think the most I saw on the hike was 78°F and the humidity was relatively low, so sweating actually worked to cool our bodies. I could feel the salt on my face at the end of the hike though.

I took a bunch if pics, too many probably. I'll post some on Flickr, though perhaps not this morning. "Seen one waterfall, seen 'em all."

We rested awhile at the upper falls and then started back down the rim trail. I'd forgotten that it begins with a steep descent on a seemingly endless set of stairs.

I found that in descending, I had to extend the poles a bit. Figuring out what length to set them at was a bit of trial and error. Ascending or walking on more or less level terrain, 49 inches was about right. I could essentially keep my hands low at my waist and just use my wrists to swing the poles forward. Going up, I could put a pole higher on a step or steep part of the trail with my arm remaining low enough to actually give me some assistance.

The trails are studded with roots and rocks and I almost turned an ankle a couple of times. I worried about Mitzi, but she's been using poles far longer than I have.

The image above shows the elevation profile for the gorge trail, hiking up to the upper falls. The rim trail isn't identical, but it is easier. Before we set out on the rim trail, I asked ChatGPT if it was easier than the gorge trail. Here's what it offered:

In Robert H. Treman State Park, the Gorge Trail is generally considered more challenging than the Rim Trail. The Gorge Trail runs closer to the creek and features a series of steps, bridges, and steep inclines, providing closer views of waterfalls and rock formations. The Rim Trail, while still moderately challenging, tends to have fewer steep sections and more gradual inclines, making it a bit easier for hikers compared to the Gorge Trail.

I used the Activity app to record both hikes. The gorge trail took one hour and forty-nine minutes, and expended 635 "active calories." Average heart rate was 136 bpm. The rim trail took one hour and 27 minutes and expended 545 calories, with an average heart rate of 138 bpm. The difference in time is confounded by the amount of time I spent taking pictures on the gorge trail. The increase in average heart rate may be due to fatigue.

While the grotesque obscenity was much on my mind yesterday, prompted often by seeing people in the water and thinking that rules are for chumps in America, I did enjoy the beauty of my surroundings and the pleasant sounds of birdsong and rushing water.

I think the effort I expended hiking the trail would have otherwise been spent in anger and anxiety, and the hike was a far better experience.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:33 Wednesday, 3 July 2024

With regard to the "Seal Team Six scenario"...

“If the secretary of defense does it, and whether it’s successful or not, everyone involved in that crime could be prosecuted save for one person — the person who ordered it,” Becker said.

That is his opinion. It won't be resolved until a court weighs the facts of the case. The President of the United States is the Commander in Chief of the United States Military. The armed forces of the United States are a part of the executive branch of government. The members of the military are sworn to obey the "lawful orders" of the president and the officers appointed over them.

The Supreme Court has said that the law does not apply to the president in the conduct of his official duties, and that is supposedly somehow enshrined in the Constitution, which the members of the military swear an oath to uphold.

The president himself cannot perform the missions and tasks of the military, that's why he has a military. He orders them to carry out those missions and tasks. Posse Commitatus Act? Literally no longer applies to the only person with the power to violate it.

Add to this that this president, or any future president, can fire defense secretaries and combatant commanders until he finds one who will obey his orders. And he won't have to go far to do so

Add to this the legal jeopardy officers and enlisted members of the military place themselves in when refusing to obey an order, the "lawfulness" of which is now utterly in question.

This is a disastrous decision in every dimension. Utterly incomprehensible. A power manufactured out of whole cloth to facilitate creating an autocracy in the United States of America, by unelected, unaccountable demagogues.

This should keep everyone up at night.

It did me.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:38 Tuesday, 2 July 2024

I don't recognize my country anymore. It has let me down before, but I believed in the institutions. I never thought the Supreme Court would weasel its way to making a president into a king. There is no way this decision does anything but promote more turmoil and bad faith.

Perhaps Biden should exercise his newly granted authority in creative, albeit "official," ways.

I never liked the "Seal Team Six" scenario. Service members are only bound by oath to obey "lawful orders." This raises the very serious, very legitimate question of just exactly what a "lawful order" is today.

I never imagined the Supreme Court as chaos agents. But if your agenda is to overthrow democracy, I guess it makes sense.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 18:13 Monday, 1 July 2024

I brought along the little Olympus Stylus 1s to Port Ewen. This is shot from my sister-in-law's condo across the Hudson to the eastern bank of the Hudson. The train is headed up from Poughkeepsie to Rhinebeck. My daughter Caitie took that train a couple of years ago when we were staying in Kingston for a week.

Mitzi's key fob has gone dead. I did a little homework while she was calling a Toyota dealer. I have the manuals on my computer. While she was talking I popped my fob open with my Swiss Army knife and showed her I could replace the battery with no trouble. It's a CR-2450, so we'll stop at Walmart before we get to Mom's and pick up a two-pack, and I'll replace both of them.

My brother has asked me to not install the bidet. He wants to make sure they're permitted, and if they are, he says the maintenance staff will install it. That way if there are any issues, they'll resolve them.

Sounds good to me!

The news is not great on the climate front with the reversal of the Chevron decision. So much for "precedent," and "settled law." This is just a part of the right-wing conservative agenda, much of which is outlined in chilling detail in Project 2025.

I don't wish to be apocalyptic, but we're in a lot of trouble. This isn't a singular struggle, but part of a continuum of conflict that waxes and wanes through history. We're confronting very serious threats on multiple fronts, and the political is perhaps the most consequential, because that affects what resources we can bring to bear on the others.

People tire of politics, and I think that's intentional by politicians. But we have to find the wherewithal to engage in the process, to talk to one another about it, to work hard and participate. To do otherwise is to surrender our agency in affecting the course of history, determining our future. It does matter. Saying your vote doesn't count is an expression of fear, originates in fear. It's not reality.

We must believe in democracy, have faith in our ability to shape our destiny.

It's not time to give up, it's time to get up. The hour is late, but it's not too late. Talk to your friends, post on your blog, if you're on social media, well, you shouldn't be. But if you are, don't post from fear. Summon courage, channel it. We're all in this together, even the folks we oppose; but none of the things we value will endure if we surrender to fear.

You're in this fight whether you want to be or not. So stand up and fight, or you'll be letting fear win.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:21 Saturday, 29 June 2024

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:57 Friday, 28 June 2024

Last night was our third night in a hotel and we have three more to go. I'm ready for it to be over now. Both places we've stayed at have very loud ac units, that rumble. The beds are on enclosed platforms that seem to form a resonance chamber, and so the low frequency rumble is amplified as you're lying in bed. And for some reason, my tinnitus has decided to amp up the volume. Not sleeping well and feeling cranky.

Tonight is the shit-show everyone's been (not) waiting for. Yes, Biden's old, and in an ideal world he wouldn't be the candidate. But we live in an absurd world, so absurdities are the rule of the day.

In the blogosphere, there's angst about AI being trained on the "open web." It's only "open" if you have permission I guess. And, I must say, like Captain Louis Renault, "I'm shocked" that tech companies were behaving "badly." I mean, really? All these visionary, well-informed, tuned-in, savvy web "influencers" didn't see this coming? El-oh-el!

We were able to charge the RAV4 at both of the hotels we've stayed at, though we missed seeing the chargers the first night at the first hotel. When we did notice them, they were inoperative. The first person we spoke to at the desk appeared clueless, but we got someone who knew what the story was and it turns out that the chargers trip a breaker in the hotel. They reset the breaker and we were able to charge the car. For free.

This Hilton Garden Inn we're at now has chargers, but they're on a different network, so another app and more surveillance. Also, not free. But we charged anyway, because it's better for the world.

Mom continues her slow decline, but her spirits are good. She's growing more hard of hearing too. We went out with my brother to an outdoor hamburger stand last night for dinner. They go there once a week. It was a real piece of Americana. I managed to avoid ordering any ice cream.

Today we'll spend with Mom, and tomorrow we'll head down the Hudson to Port Ewen to visit Mitzi's sister for lunch. She's the one who spent a couple of months with us while her broken pelvis healed. Saturday will be the 10th anniversary of Dad's death, so we'll spend that here with family.

Sunday we're on the road for Trumansburg and hopefully, better accommodations.

The shot above is from the side of the road in the area where I grew up. It's the kind of thing you can take for granted as an adolescent when you're looking at it every day. As an old man, it's one of the most beautiful sights in the world. I keep telling Mitzi we have to come up here in the winter so I can get over my infatuation with the place. I do recall that it can get cloudy in October and remain overcast through April, or seem like it anyway. We're always up here in the summer.

Anyway, the beat goes on.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:25 Thursday, 27 June 2024

This is where I "grew up," or, at least the years between 6th and 12th grade. My parents built this place on two acres of land they bought from my grandfather in 1968, so it'll be 60 years old in four years. That sounds like a long time.

The front porch, mud room on the side and garage were all added later. We had wooden 2x10 steps up to the front door and back door for much of my time there.

It's odd, but I can't recall if any of the additions took place while I lived there. They were all added by my parents, because I recall going through the garage attic where much of my "stuff" was moved at some point, either by my parents or my brothers.

The place has a full basement where I used to pound out CQ on 80 meters CW as WN2FEB, I can still recall the smell of mildew and ozone, and the chill on my shoulders.

Not long after we moved in, we discovered the basement flooded. They installed a sump pump to manage that. Drinking water comes from a well, and it was very hard and had a distinct odor. I recall when we vacationed at Gramma's from Michigan, I didn't like the water because it "smelled." Turns out, you get used to it, but everything white eventually turns orange.

The trees in the left side of the frame were planted as saplings. They originally outlined our "picnic" area where we had our picnic table. Nearly everyone had a picnic table outside in those days. We'd often eat outside, bugs be damned.

Later it became the location of a used above-ground pool my dad bought and had set up. Back behind the garage was the chicken house, which we bought and had moved from wherever they bought it from. We had a few dozen chickens and sold eggs for a while. One of my chores in the winter was to trudge out through the snow to the chicken house to collect the eggs. As cold as it might be outside, the chickens kept the chicken house pretty warm.

One of my other chores was to also shovel all the chicken shit out into a wheelbarrow, and then spread it on the garden.

Speaking of shoveling, I also had to shovel snow out of the driveway so Dad could go to work. We used what was called a "grain shovel." It had a huge blade with a flat front edge and scooped sides. Mom would melt paraffin on it so the wet snow wouldn't stick as much.

Anyway, "Good times," as they say.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:49 Wednesday, 26 June 2024

Had a nice morning hike to the base of the falls. It's not a long hike, but it's pretty steep. Had the place all to ourselves for a little while.

Seems like they've recently made some improvements at the park, the restrooms were among the best I've ever seen anywhere.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 13:20 Tuesday, 25 June 2024

Made it to New York safely yesterday. Pretty for much of the drive, it was cloudy over northern Pennsylvania and the early part of southern New York, with strong, gusty winds.

It cleared up quickly as we headed north. We took State Road 26 from Whitney Point north to 46 then on to Verona. It was a very lovely drive, with very little traffic.

It's a welcome part of each of these trips, seeing the green hills, the farms, rivers and lakes and the old houses. We even saw a doe standing in a field. It's remarkable what a little elevation will do to lift your spirits.

Six hours in the car, with moderate traffic and little construction. I-83 and 81 are both in relatively decent shape. Encountered only one case of insanity, where an individual was weaving in and out of traffic and cut us off and had to brake because he couldn't get around the car in front of him, which made me brake hard to avoid rear-ending him. Happened right in front of a trooper parked in the median, but he didn't pursue.

Had dinner with my brother last night at a restaurant at Turning Stone Casino. Food was unremarkable, but we came for the company. Today we're going to visit my father's grave, hike a bit around Chittenango Falls, visit the Canal Town Museum in Canastota, NY which is where I lived for grades 6-12. Tonight we'll get together with one of my old high school classmates, and back on the road tomorrow out to Clifton Park near Albany to see Mom and a few of my siblings.

We're there through Sunday, when we'll head to Trumansburg for a two-week stay in a small place by creek.

It's wonderful to get away from the heat and the insanity of Florida.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:15 Tuesday, 25 June 2024

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 13:14 Sunday, 23 June 2024

Spent time yesterday as tourists before it got super-hot today. Mitzi's daughter took some time off and accompanied us as we visited some of the memorials we didn't visit last time. We were fortunate that the crowds that were present when we were here two weeks ago were absent yesterday.

I wanted to be sure to visit the Lincoln Memorial, having just finished The Demon of Unrest and Union. I'm glad we did. The memorial is undergoing a great deal of renovation, presumably in preparation for the nation's sesquicentennial in 2026. But it's still open, just not as picturesque. I'll post some pics at Flickr later.

Probably because I'm an old man now, I felt very moved as I read the words of Lincoln's second inaugural address. The last time I visited this monument was more than 20 years ago, and I've learned so much since then. I was also affected by watching the other tourists lining up to have their pictures taken in front of Lincoln's statue.

From there, we visited the Martin Luther King Memorial. Also a remarkable experience. It's interesting that King's body is facing the Jefferson Memorial, though his gaze does not. King's memorial falls between Jefferson's and Lincoln's and has something to say about the promise of freedom and equality, and the unfinished work of realizing that promise.

Walking up the tidal basin, past the cherry trees, we went to the FDR memorial and lingered there for a while. I took the opportunity to try some long-exposure shots with the Oly XZ-2, which has a built-in 3-stop ND filter. There's some motion blur as the camera's IBIS isn't quite able to compensate for a hot, tired old man's unsteady grip.

Sherri, Mitzi's daughter, and I talked a bit about how remarkable it was that at two crucial moments for our nation, leaders emerged who seemed uniquely fit to meet that moment, and we wondered where that leader was today. I also wondered how it happened that each was succeeded by a man who was chose on the basis of a political calculation of compromise.

I have to say that as cynical as I can be about partisan politics, I am profoundly affected by the ideals and sacrifices memorialized in our capital city.

(And may I just say that the words "capital" and "capitol" are utterly confusing in usage.)

The beat goes on...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 10:44 Saturday, 22 June 2024

<img src=“https://nice-marmot.net/Archives/2024/Images/Image 1.JPG” alt=““Show your stripes” graphic indicating the rising temperature annually due to antrhopogenic climate change”>

We made it to DC safely. A couple of interesting/scary moments. People are insane. Though for the most part, traffic was rather light and we encountered only a small amount of construction. Right at twelve hours door to door.

Apple Maps let me down on finding a rest area in North Carolina just over the border from South Carolina. There were two entries indicated on the map when I searched for rest stops, one indicated being closed, the other was a bit north on the map and indicated it was on I-95 North. Well, suffice to say, there is only one and it is closed.

Mitzi had been driving for a while and it's our custom to pull over at a rest area, stretch our legs and eat lunch before switching drivers. I relied on Apple Maps and was disappointed. We ended up eating standing up next to the car in the shade of a tree by the side of a road off one of the other exits.

It's hot here. Unsurprising.

Supposedly, one of the best things we can do about climate change is "talk about it." I do that a fair amount here, perhaps too much.

I get frustrated by "attribution" reports. That climate change has made a certain weather event X-percent "more likely."

It's not "more likely," because there is no "likely" climate that exists anymore, and hasn't for some time. But the cumulative effects are now being felt with regularity.

The climate system that produces the weather we experience today is unprecedented in earth's history. Not just human history, the history of the planet.

All of the weather we are experiencing is due to this new reality. It's not "more likely," it just is. It's not going to revert to some "normal" state.

Attribution analyses were kind of a response to denialism, but I think reality is a sufficient response to denialism and these attribution analyses seem misleading to me with these weasel words, "more likely." Likely compared to what? A climate that doesn't exist anymore?

The reality is that there is more energy in the climate system. Energy is the capacity to do work. Weather events will do "more work," be "more extreme" (Although even that's misleading because they're by no means "extreme" in the context of our present climate system.)

We have a civilization with a physical and economic infrastructure built for a climate that no longer exists and that we cannot return to. We can stop making it worse, and we must. But the sooner we wake up and accept the new reality and what brought it about, the sooner we can begin making the kinds of changes that will reduce suffering.

Anyway...

The beat goes on.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 11:01 Friday, 21 June 2024

I hope all the dads and granddads out there had a pleasant day yesterday. My son and his wife and their three boys joined us at the water park here in our neighborhood. Their youngest, Jackson, is four now and is less shy around me and far more eager to play in the various water features than last year. The older boys did an excellent job looking after their little brother. Weather cooperated with broken clouds keeping the sun's intensity in check.

Out of fatigue more than interest, we watched Armageddon last night on (shudder) cable television. I'm pretty good at finding the mute button on the remote by feel, but the number of commercials was simply incomprehensible. By the end of the movie I realized why CW selected that title for its Father's Day offering. A horrible movie, but in an almost camp, so-bad-it's-good sort of way, it was worth watching yesterday.

We're making preps for heading north, just in time for the heat wave. We just may have the timing right, where the worst of it will be moving south toward the mid-Atlantic as we're moving north. In the past, one of the most refreshing things about visiting upstate New York in June was that it was a good ten or fifteen degrees cooler than Florida. July could get hot, but it still tended to cool more in the evenings. But that was in the "old" climate. Who knows what to expect these days?

Was chatting with a friend last week about Governor DeSantis and I referred to him as being stupid. My friend insisted he isn't stupid. I suppose he's correct. He clearly possesses some measure of intelligence. So perhaps I should use the term "fool," instead; because even people who aren't stupid can be fools, and DeSantis is a fool.

An ambitious, reckless, irresponsible fool.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:05 Monday, 17 June 2024

Sunrise looked promising but I wanted to get my bike ride in before I put the drone up. The best clouds had drifted away by the time I got home and got it launched, but it still wasn't bad.

I took a look down into the swamp and it's pretty dry, maybe drier than I've ever seen it. Net, we're above average in total rainfall in the preceding 12 months, but May was about 30% below average. (We're in St Johns County.)

Meanwhile, south Florida is flooding.

I've been watching Dark Matter on Apple TV+ and I'm ambivalent about it. It's like Quantum Leap in some ways, but the latest episode makes me think it's a remake of The Wizard of Oz, with Amanda as Gwendolyn and the tip that, "There's no place like home." The only thing missing was a pair of ruby slippers (which I saw at the Smithsonian a couple of weeks ago).

I've been playing Quartiles in Apple News+ Puzzles. I guess it's Apple's version of Wordle. I find it pretty entertaining. I seldom get all the words, but I get all the "quartiles" and made "expert" on every game I've played since late last May. I don't understand the "streak" thing on the Scoreboard. My "Current Streak" is 1 day, but my "Expert Rate" is 100% and my "Longest Streak" is 7 days, and I've played every day since I started. Makes no sense to me.

The chainsaw arrived yesterday, and it was really used. They stuck a new chain in the box, but I'm sending it back. I'd rather buy a new one than a scratched=up, oil-soaked used one with a well-thumbed, oily user manual for only a 12% discount. If it'd been discounted 35%, I'd say it was a fair deal. But the previous owner did some serious wood cutting and then returned it. Cheapskate. I didn't even stick a battery in it.

Anyway, the beat goes on...

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:39 Thursday, 13 June 2024

Had dinner last night with my daughters, my son-in-law, one of my granddaughters and Mitzi. The restaurant was right next door to a Whit's custard, so dessert was on the menu as well. Enjoyed seeing them all together. We ate at a restaurant in Atlantic Beach in an area of town known as "the corner." It was formerly Ocean 60, but it's an Italian restaurant now. In any event, I dread going down there because parking is nigh-on impossible. They implemented paid parking to try and alleviate the situation by keeping people from going to the beach and taking a parking place all day.

We began our second orbit when we noticed a car backing out on the left side of the street. I turned on my left blinker but there was a pickup truck headed the other way and I thought he would snag the spot first. He slowed, but he didn't pull in.

We were puzzled, but as we approached we saw that it was an "EV Charging Only" space, and guess who drives a plug-in hybrid? Woo-hoo!

Not only was the parking essentially "free." (I got a text from ChargePoint that the city begins charging $2.00/hour for the space after the first three hours.) When we left, the RAV4 was fully charged, and it only cost $1.65!

Normally, that round-trip would have been all electric, but we had to pick up and drop off my youngest daughter, so the extra mileage made it right at the ragged edge of our battery-only range. With the charge, we did the whole thing in EV mode with battery to spare when we got home.

After last night's large dinner and ice cream dessert, I didn't exactly feel like getting up at 0500 and walking. But I did and I'm glad.

While I was sleeping, Amazon delivered my "new to me" Makita DMP181ZX high-pressure inflator. I usually have to pump up the bicycle tires every couple of days and I have a compressor, but it makes an awful racket. The bicycle pumps work fine, and I know I need the exercise. But when we were on the road to New York a few years ago, we had a leaking tire. We'd stop every couple of hours to change drivers and stretch our legs, part of Mitzi's pain management, and have to add some air to the tire. We got it fixed when we got to our destination, but it made me anxious having to always look for a gas station to pull into and hope that they had a working compressor.

I'll be bringing this thing along with us this trip. If we have to top off a tire, we can do it anywhere.

Anyway, got back from the walk, opened the box and stuck in a battery. Pumped up both my bike tires in no time and it's much quieter than the compressor, and much easier than futzing with the bicycle pump. I was playing with the info screen on the RAV4 yesterday, and noticed that it reported one of the tires down about three pounds. So I'll top that off this morning before I head out to my dentist appointment.

If I'm looking at a Makita tool, I'll watch for an Amazon Warehouse sale. It only saves about 10%, which is what I could save at Home Depot, but Home Depot has it listed for $10 more than the Amazon retail price, so I still saved $10. I can't imagine why anyone would have returned it, it looks band new and all the little accessory fittings were present. Maybe they didn't like that you have to screw on the valve connector.

Later this week I should receive a 10" Makita 18v chainsaw. Also a Warehouse buy. It's not something I'm likely to use very often (if ever), but it's the kind of thing that when you need one, you probably really need one. And it's hurricane season. I don't think I'd need anything larger than 10". And if I did, we're probably in more trouble than some downed limbs. I have a bow saw and used it a couple of months ago when Mitzi wanted to remove a couple of cypress trees she'd mistakenly planted too close to the house. Between my little Fiskars hatchet and the bow saw, we got them down, but it was a lot of work.

Anyway, fools and their money and all that.

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Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:18 Monday, 10 June 2024

I've been walking at 0500 every morning for the past week, and biking right after that. I get 5K in on the walk, and 10K on the bike and I'm home by about 0630, and I'm pretty much assured of closing my Move ring without doing another "workout." That's important because we're entering the hot part of the year with the heat index often exceeding 100°F.

Shot the image above with the iPhone this morning. It was 76° and humid this morning, so I'm disinclined to press just for a better time. So pausing for a moment to see if the phone could render a nice image was fine.

Turned out pretty well, I think. This is SOOC, other than being converted to jpeg.

I'm reading Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, by Vulker Ulrich, translated by Jefferson Chase. This is a close look at the days between Hitler's suicide and the final surrender agreement. It moves quickly. If you haven't read anything about Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war, it may be troubling.

One thing I found interesting was the fear the German people had of the millions of "foreign workers" (slave laborers) living in Germany. It was resonant with the fear the Confederate states had of enslaved people, mentioned often in Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest.

You'd think that fear or anxiety might have been a clue.

Netflix has a new series on Nazi Germany, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. I've watched the first two episodes. It's pretty well done, with some actual audio from the Nuremberg trials. It's also written pretty on the nose with regard to current events. There's historical footage mixed with reenactments. Six episodes. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.

I'm afraid of what might happen in November. My "best case scenario" is a resounding electoral defeat of Trump, and the repudiation of Trumpism. Ideally, Republicans would then clean house and we'd see the last of the likes of Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott and all the other sycophantic toadies who groveled and licked the boots the failed gameshow host who somehow managed to hoodwink his way into the presidency.

But that's the "best case," and I'm not very optimistic we'll see it. I'm afraid of a low turnout election.

History doesn't repeat, "but it often rhymes."

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:56 Friday, 7 June 2024