Season's Greetings

So, we just had a great dinner on this, the eve of Isaac Newton's Birthday, and we're looking forward to the big holiday tomorrow. This year, since we went to Palm Springs earlier in the season, we have made special plans for the day, to wit:

It's Godzillarama! All Godzilla, all the time!*

Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth-Two

Godzilla vs King Ghidorah: Game of Thrones

Godzilla vs Destoroyah: The Thrillah in Manila

Godzilla vs Space Godzilla in Space

Rebirth of Mothra 1

Re-Rebirth of Mothra 2

Godzilla against the MechagodzillaMechaGod

Godzilla 2000: A Space Odyssey

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla: 2 Mecha, 2 Zilla

Godzilla vs Megaguirus, Whoever That Is

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack starring Larry, Moe, and Curly

Godzilla Final Wars: This is Final Tap

Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S. P.D.Q. A.S.A.P.

Couch, jammies, junk food, and Godzilla all day: nothing says the holidays like it.

*Titles not guaranteed accurate.

PSP PS

So, on one of our warm and sunny walks through and around Palm Springs, Coco and I stopped for something cool and refreshing at a little shop that sold frozen yogurt, gelato, and Italian ices.

If you have never had an Italian Ice, it's kind of like a poor cousin of sorbet or granita - smoother than Hawaiian shaved ice, and with the fruit flavors mixed in, not poured on.

This little place had lots of flavors, including the classic lemon. This was a standard treat when I was a kid in Brooklyn, sold in pizza places and from guys with carts, and lemon was always the go-to flavor. We used to get them for a nickel, in a little paper cup, not cardboard but pleated paper. And when we were finished with the ice, we would suck that paper for any last remnants of flavor. I explained all this to the young woman behind the counter.

And which point she said "You mean cups like these?" And there it was:

No madeleine ever brought memories rushing back so vividly. I could almost smell the hot blacktop of a city summer after a rain, hear the sound of a spaldeen being hit by a broom handle, feel the soles of new PF Flyers pounding on the sidewalk and the sweaty coins in my hand, as I raced after the ice cream guy.

I paid one hundred times the price of my youth for a standard cup of lemon ice, and took one of the paper cups as a memento. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but it has place of pride on my bookshelf right now, helping the memories linger.

PSP 4: Home Again

So, the nature of this trip as a high-quality vacation held up until the end.

Thursday had pool time, of course, but Coco was in an arting mood, so she arted, and we made out usual visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum.

Artist gotta art

Hmmm...

I actually look like I know something about art...

Outdoor sculpture garden, too

Thursday might we attended the premier of the new Star Wars movie - there were no lines and the theater wasn't even full. Go figure. I may say more about it on Thark, but suffice to say I was underwhelmed.

Friday was a perfect last day in Palm Spring - warm sunny, and gorgeous. We took a walk to breakfast, hung out in the pool all day, ate all the food in the fridge, and ended the day with a great happy hour.

Certain readers of this blog will immediately get the crab vs lobster reference here

Overall, another one in the win column. I think Palm Springs might be the holiday tradition from here on in. We'll see.

PSP 3

So, in a few hours we will have been here a week, and we'll have two more days to go. A most excellent trip, if I do say so. After the flurry of activity those first weekend days, Monday and Tuesday were filled mostly with hanging out at the pool, swimming (if you're Coco), walking, reading, and relaxing: totally pleasurable and rejuvenating activities, but perhaps not very generative of photo ops.

Yesterday was to be the coolest and cloudiest day of the trip, so we took the opportunity to jump in the car and make the Palms to Pines drive up the back of Mt. San Jacinto (if you consider the side that the Palms Springs Tramway goes up the front). It is, of course, a curvy road full of switchbacks, and just like it says on the tin, the foliage changes from desert palms to scruffy pines and all of a sudden you're the Pacific Northwest again. Well, not really, but the little town of Idyllwild was really reminiscent of Winthrop, out on the Cascade Loop.

Viewpoint about halfway up.

Snow!

All the critters of California

That was yesterday. Today, I was up before the sun as usual, and I just thought our hotel looked so pretty in the crepuscular light.

PSP 2

So, solo bike rides the last two mornings, another joint walk this morning once Coco gets stirring. This vacation has been swinging, ticking off all the boxes.

First of all, pool time:

Coco says she wants to tell all her troubles to the inflatable flamingo 

Now I need to get JLA trunks to balance things out

There are some things we like to do every time we come down: one of them is the Street Fair at College of the Desert:

This year: metal cactus sculpture, sunglasses, baseball cap, and veggie dogs!

I speak frequently about one the reasons I love Palm Springs: it embodies both a love of old Hollywood and a vibrant contemporary gay community, at the same time and often in the same place. Last night, we went to The Judy Show at the Purple Room, which swirled both of those themes into a fun, bitingly hilarious evening: a drag show capturing late-career Judy Garland and special guests Pearl Bailey and Bette Davis, performed in the Rat-Packiest of venues.

s

We also were in the audience for The Storm Large Holiday Ordeal (no pictures allowed - classy theater), and if you know anything about Storm, you know how well she can navigate that kind of blended pop culture.

We've got some more great weather ahead, and maybe some clouds, but this trip is already off the charts.

PSP 1

So, it must say something about the state of the blogosphere that I haven't posted anything yet this vacation. As sporadic as this site has been over the past few years, I have always used the blog as my electronic postcards on trips, and here I have been in Palm Springs for almost 48 hours and haven't posted a thing. Let's correct that.

First of all, our flight out of Bham was delayed on the tarmac for about an hour for equipment maintenance. Not a real big deal, and the crew was very communicative all the way through, but here's the thing: the delay was caused by indicator light saying a deicing valve would not close; fine, we need to check to see if the valve is malfunctioning or if the indicator is malfunctioning. I get that. But the solution to the problem was to lock the valve in the open position. Which raises the question in my mind that if the plane can function perfectly well with the valve open, why was there even a need to close it in the first place?

But we made it Palm Springs just fine and had our traditional first-stop lunch at Maracas on the strip before checking into the hotel, which is pretty sweet. Restored mid-century modern, nice people, great room, and they even brought and extra table so Coco could grade. (Unfortunately, we're both doing a bit of remote work this trip.)

The rest of Thursday saw provisioning, a nice Asian-fusion dinner a short walk away, and the Thursday night street fair.

Friday started with a long walk through the neighborhoods, and saw lots of swimming and poolside reading action (between work spurts), ending with a so-so dinner at a vegetarian spot in East Palm Springs.

Today I took a nice bike ride up trough the Las Palmas neighborhood, where I fully intend to retire someday. There is something about the desert beauty and the modernist architecture of the homes that really appeals to me: maybe it just seems more clean and orderly to me, but I feel really comfortable with it.

We'll see what the rest of the day holds, but here's some images of the trip so far.

Thursday night street fair

Mural that Coco named "Monkey Punching Something"

Someday...

My kind of vacation

Thanks, of a sort

So, Thanksgiving can be a bit problematic, so much so that I have rarely commemorated it on this blog - just once in ten years, as a matter of fact.

Today as I was thinking about how I relate to the day (and by thinking I mean looking at the internet), I came across this Wikipedia article that I kinda like (edited for clarity):

Labor Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in Japan celebrated on November 23 of each year. The law establishing the holiday cites it as an occasion to commemorate labor and production and give one another thanks.

Events are held throughout Japan, one such being the Nagano Labor Festival. The event encourages thinking about the environment, peace and human rights.

Labor Thanksgiving Day is the modern name for an ancient harvest festival known as Niiname-sai, celebrating the harvest of the Five Cereals (rice, barley/wheat, foxtail millet, barnyard millet, proso millet, and beans). [...] Traditionally, it celebrated the year's hard work; during the Niiname-sai ceremony, the Emperor would dedicate the year's harvest to kami (spirits), and taste the rice for the first time.

The modern holiday was established after World War II in 1948 as a day to mark some of the changes of the postwar Constitution of Japan, including fundamental human rights and the expansion of workers rights.

Although it doesn't track precisely with the date (excerpt every six or eight years or something, right?), I like the thrust of this: a focus on worker's rights and human rights.

Giving thanks for each other as well as for the work we do.

So, thanks everyone.

Falling in

So, it was summer up to a few days ago. Then we had this big, Midwest style thunderstorm - loud and long with numerous lightning strikes and sheets of rain. When it cleared, it was fall. Temperatures are 15 degrees cooler and skies are cloudier.

In a way, it's perfect timing. Fall Quarter starts up soon - faculty are back on campus Tuesday, and students a week after that. Gone are my short weeks and long sunny weekends. I am doing my morning exercises in the dark and watching the sun set on our evening walls, and gearing up to get used to being busy again.

Summer is the time for working on projects - campus is slower without students or faculty, just us year-round administrative types around, and we can make some headway on strategic stuff instead of always being in reactive mode, putting out fires. Fall is crank-up-the-engine time: high energy, bustling, and full of promise - and work.

This fall will be particularly busy for me. On top of my usual work, I am enrolled in a post-master's certificate program, I am attending a week-long leadership academy, and I am participating in a site visit for our accrediting body. That's on top of the usual state commissions and conferences.

I'll mark my 62nd birthday soon, and will hopefully have a adventure to report about that. I want to keep up on my exercises and biking - much harder to maintain a regimen in the wet and cold and dark, but I've lost about 40 pounds this year and want to continue to feel this good. Besides school stuff, I have a stack of Barbara Ehrenreich and Cory Doctorow to read, and the customary nightly NYT crossword will continue. Maybe I'll even fit some gaming in around the edges.

Yeah, it's gonna be busy.

But that's tomorrow. Today read my last weekend day of summer, and my sweetie and I spent it together, doing chores, attending an 85th birthday celebration, sharing meals, and taking a walk along the bay during a break in the rain. And we close the night snuggled on the couch watching Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.

Tomorrow and fall will come soon enough, but if you ask me, this is a perfect way to end a summer.

Arise...

So, I have had thoughts lately, among all the other thoughts I have been thinking about this maelstrom that our country is in, about how that any real solution to the problems of economic inequity and social divisions in our country is going to have to include a reinvigoration of labor unions. I am not sure how that can happen, or exactly what it would look like, but the notion is growing in my consciousness.

Anyway, Happy Labor Day.

Here's a couple of links for today:

Have we forgotten the true meaning of Labor Day?

Labor Day: From Protest to Picnics

~From Bookiniste

A thing I thought I would never say

So, this week I drove through the Seattle Waterfront Tunnel.

Given all the sturm und drang that has accompanied this project - from the controversy over design options to the two-year delay when Big Bertha, the drilling machine, broke down - troubles that continue even now - I honestly never expected the tunnel to be completed. I thought it would be another  mirage that evaporated into nothingness, taking with it scads of taxpayer money, just like the notorious monorail project.

But, for good or bad, it's there, and I drove thought it on the way to SeaTac to drop Coco off for a trip to Hawaii. We had jumped off I-5 at Crown Hill on the advice of the GoogleMaps to save a little drive time; congested 99 was not much better than the crawling freeway, but it was nice to see the changes to the strip. There were some bigger box-buildings, but overall the Aurora Avenue stretch of the state route looked as depressed and depressing as ever, shabby and grimy commerce at its worst, with dilapidated structures, weeds, and ugly signage.

That traffic was miserable was not a surprise or even a disappointment, since we had no expectations; it was just a drag. It was exacerbated by our failure to understand the lane convergence as 99 crossed the Aurora Bridge and headed south: there was only one lane for southbound traffic for a long time, as the left lane was exit-only to Denny Avenue in south Lake Union and the right lane was bus-only. The lane changes and merging as vehicles joined the flow from Queen Anne access points brought us all to standstill over and over again.

We were surprised by the tunnel, to tell the truth; when we left Seattle for Bellingham in 2015, Bertha was still comatose. We had heard that the project was active, but honestly hadn't been following it closely. Traffic didn't speed up until we were out of it, so we had ample time at single-digit mph to experience the engineering.  One thing stood out for both Coco and me:

The wall was covered with exit markings, big graphics and arrows, lots of them. There seemed to be an exit every 600 feet or so, with numerous marking in between each. Having grown up riding through the Holland and Battery Tunnels in New York City, I had always been intrigued by the exits and personnel stations along the walls, and wondered about what subterranean - or subfluvial - world they led to. It was Coco who pointed out that the stick people on the wall were running.

These are emergency exits.

Now, remember the tunnel exits because of an earthquake - the 2001 Nisqually quake was the final blow the the seismically under-prepared viaduct that the tunnel replaced. The Seattle waterfront has always been a major concern in earthquake planning - much of the waterfront is landfill, and in a major quake a lot of the ground is expected to just liquefy. But the Department of Transportation says the tunnel is built to the most up-to-date seismic standards and might even be the safest place to be during an earthquake. And perhaps it is.

But all those emergency exits still make me nervous.

Six mile limit?

So, back in Seattle, I lived within easy striking distance of the Burke-Gilman trail, which, with it's eastside connector the Sammammish River Trail, gave me over 30 miles of paved, separate paths for biking. Here's a map, courtesy of the Seattle Bike Blog:

The path runs through neighborhoods, through two college campuses, through parks, by lakes, over rivers - every turn brings a new scenescape. The path is filled with walkers, runners and bilkers of all stripes, from iron men to stroke recovery patients.

I used to ride for fun a lot, and bike-commuted 13 miles (in nice weather) to my college in Bothell, from that big curve right above where it says University of Washington right onto campus. It actually took me to places I wanted to go, - not just recreation, but shops as well. I could jump on it whenever I wanted, and get in an easy ride or a long one, no sweat.

I miss it.

Bellingham is pretty much a biking mecca, but it's mountain biking - you know, like no-snow, wheeled skiing. Drag your butt and your bike up to the top of a cliff and go whee all the way down, trying (or not) to avoid roots, rocks, bumps and other obstacles. I know folks who do it regularly, who would do it daily, who do it when it's raining, who do it at nigh, who do it when it's raining at night.

I'm not interested.

Luckily, I live adjacent to the Interurban Trail and just blocks from the South Bay Trail, two of Bellingham's premiere bike paths. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but even this near-perfect location has two major flaws.

First, the trails are not paved - they are gravel. Spoiled by the blacktop of the Burke, I find the going bumpy and unstable, even on my hybrid bike - lord knows how anyone with a touring bike does it. I even had to buy fatter knobby tires.

But more than that, the problem is the trails don't go anywhere. Here's take a look:

A prime ride down the interurban trail to Larrabee State Park: six and a half miles. That's the whole trail.

A nice ride up the Bay Trail and then some more along the waterfront and in the marinas: sixc and a third miles.

Or the Bay Trail, through downtown and into Cornwall park: five and half miles, and about two of those are on city streets.

Speaking of city streets, this route to Whatcom Falls park is mostly streets, although I tried to string little pieces of trail together: a hair over six miles.

Anything that goes past these limits becomes pure mall-burbia car-country unpleasant and unsuitable for riding, at least for me. The core city streets are a little better, but I may have lost my stomach for riding in substantial auto traffic.

I even thought about taking the bus out to the county and riding the country roads, but all my peeps who live out here advised against it: no shoulders and crazy drivers.

I guess I learned a few things from this rumination. You can't road bike in a mountain bike town. I'm not as young (or perhaps as stupid) as once I was. The Burke spoiled me.

And Bellingham is about six miles big.

Two-lane blacktop

So, the other week Coco and I drove across the state to Spokane to visit some great and good friends. Instead of taking the interstate, we went by way of the North Cascades Scenic Highway, generally state route 20, which runs through a beautiful mountain pass, goes through some lovely recreation spots, passes by Grand Coulee Dam, and really doesn't take much longer.

It's a pretty grand dam, all right.

As we were driving along on the east side of the mountains, I noticed that there was an extremely straight and long stretch of road coming up - somewhere around Davenport - and I have to tell you that in the generally hilly coastal landscape of the Pacific Northwest (my part, anyway), it was a bit of trip driving for so long without turning the steering wheel an inch. It was such a deal that I just had to share it with you.

Enjoy.

Fireworks day

So, July 4 is a bit problematic; I may have mentioned that before, here or there. This year, rather than once more bemoan the economic inequality and social injustice baked into our system, I'd like to remind us all of someone who said it so well, so long ago.

***

Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes, 1935


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s,
ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

***

Man, that gets me every time.

Just a couple more things.

One, a timely comment I found on Twitter regarding the Washington D.C. celebration today:

Ah, well.

And lastly:

E pluribus unum (/ˈiː ˈplɜːrɪbəs ˈuːnəm/; Classical Latin: [ˈeː ˈpluːrɪbʊs ˈuːnũː]) - Latin for "Out of many, one" (translated as "One out of many" or "One from many") - is a 13-letter traditional motto of the United States, appearing on the Great Seal [...] Never codified by law, E pluribus unum was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H. J. Resolution 396), adopting "In God We Trust" as the official motto.*     (from Wikipedia)

E pluribus unum is my notion of a motto, and The Original Motto Project is working on it. I haven't fully vetted the group yet, but I can sure approve in principle of their mission. By the way, the official motto of the European Union is In varietate concordia (United in diversity), so there you go.

If you have the day off, enjoy it. If you are using or enjoying fireworks, please be mindful of animals and folks with special sensitivities. If you're not in the USA, Happy Thursday.

*This was about the same time Superman started fighting for "truth, justice, and the American Way"

 instead of just for "truth and justice." How fragile we can be...

Return of the wheelman

So, it turns out this post was no April Fool after all.

As I remarked then, the Good Ship Walaka needed a bit of a course correction; I think I can report that we are back on track. Here's the tale of the tape, as the boxing reporters say:

• I have lost 34 pounds from my pre-holiday all-time high
• I maintained a 93% consistency in morning workouts since the start of the calendar year -- 97% if I get some grace for losing some days to the flu
• I am averaging eight miles of power walks or intervals every week, plus additional short walks
• My blood pressure has been consistently normal for a month and a half
• My thyroid medicine needs to be reduced, likely because I am in better shape

Not half bad, eh? And it hasn't even felt like a sacrifice, really; more like a renewal.

But the best part is this: I took the bike to get some new tires installed, since, being bereft of the functionally endless pavement of the Burke-Gilman Trail, I needed something a little wider and knobbier to navigate the gravel tracks that (inefficiently) lace Bellingham. Friendly Fairhaven Cycles upgraded me to a 38c with nice grippies on the side. I took a little shakedown ride out Taylor Dock, thought Boulevard Park and down the South Bay Trail, through downtown to Waypoint Park in the waterfront redevelopment area, and back. The new tires did reduce my feeling of instability on the rough roads, but mostly it just felt felt good to be back riding again.

We'll do it again tomorrow, and Friday is Bike-to-Work Day, so even though I am taking a vacation day, I'll make the commute and join the festivities. I daresay there'll be bike commuting for reals when my slightly more relaxed summer schedule kicks in.

I'm just going to keep rolling on.

A work in progress

New Year's Eve

So, it's not that I can't read a calendar, but it's that I am in the mood for turning over a new leaf, and this seemed the appropriate way to mark it.

You see, April 1 has traditionally been the start of my active season - specifically, my biking season, back in the day, when I had easy access to the Burke-Gilman Trail, was April 1 through October 3, and I used to try to get in as many miles in that period as I could, keeping meticulous records along the way. Here's a sample from way back when:

 (I believe blue is miles ridden and purple is average speed, plotted on the vertical axis, and each horizontal tick is ride)

Now I am getting active all over again, maybe even on a bike, and April 1st seemed like a good time to mark it.

I left 60 in the rear view mirror some time ago, and I noticed I seemed to be starting to get older faster. There were medical things that started cropping up: my thyroid is out of whack and my blood pressure is high. I had put on a little too much weight - not just prosperous as we used to say, but uncomfortable. I was slowing down, looking older, and losing vitality. So I decided to do something about it.

The doctor has me on pills for the thyroid and BP, but the latter situation at least can be ameliorated by some lifestyle changes. Working with the doctor, I went to a nutritionist, and began the transition from a carnavoidant carboterian to a better vegetarian, not going keto but reducing both carbs and calories. The other side of the coin was increasing exercise. I got back on the 5BX bandwagon and started adding more walks and intervals to the weekly routine. I was able to fairly easily integrate the changes into my activities, taking inspiration from both my father's displays of epic willpower and my promise to Coco to live to 100.

Besides the physical changes, there are psychological and attitude changes afoot as well. Gone is the countdown-to-retirement clock on my phone; I have plenty of career left. Off comes the full beard and the silver fringe, back to shaven bald and a neat goatee; I am neither Papa Smurf or Uncle Remus. The trike is being sold so I can have easier access to my road bike in the garage; R.I.P. Trike Snacks, we hardly knew ye. It may be full afternoon for me, but there's still a lot of daylight left and we're nowhere near the sunset years yet.

I actually began this regimen when we got back from Palm Springs at the actual 2019 new year; April 1 will, however, see some ramping up of the physicality and more expression of the psychology. The weather is warmer and the days are longer, so that means more opportunity for walks, runs, and yes, even bike rides. The long-sleeved shirts and ties are going in the spare closet and the bowling shirts and aloha shirts are coming out, even if it is rushing the season a bit. There will be classes attended and games played and public services performed, all with, as JFK would have it, vim and vigah.

Let's get to it. Happy new year.

Snow kidding around

So, while much of the southern Salish Sea region was hit with Snowpocalypse or Snowmaggedon or at least Snowdowns at the end of last week, up here at the north end in the City of Subdued Excitement we were missed by most of the storm and only got a dusting. Here's a view from our place on Saturday morning:

A bit underwhelming, especially when compared to the winter wonderland photos being sent by pals in Seattle, like this photo from a park in our old neighborhood:

Thanks, Margaret!

Coco was bereft. She looks forward to snow every year, and seldom gets enough to satisfy her winter jones. To be so close to the blizzard and still see so bare a landscape was frustrating. What to do?

Simple. Thanks to the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, it was a quick 44 mile southbound drive to the Washington State Department of Transportation Safety Rest Area at Milepost 207 of I-5, inside the snow zone. And it was well worth the trip:

A bit of winter frolicking, some hot chocolate for the drive home, and a happy sweetie: I'd call that a successful afternoon.

MLK

So, in the past on this January national holiday, I have posted a couple of times regarding the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This year, here's an article from Jacobin magazine that covers a lot of the same ground, but much more comprehensively.

Have a good day.

Excelsior.

So we begin another year, and the work continues. Some of us struggle to survive, some are lucky enough to have to grapple only with figuring out how to help.

The world can seem daunting. Consider the words of Albert Camus:

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled
mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

It is absurd, but so are we.

Wishing everyone the best in the coming year.