“The Army Corps of Engineers suddenly opened up the dams of California’s Lake Kaweah and Lake Success over the weekend. The three day-long releases cost the two Tulare County reservoirs more than 2.2 billion gallons of water — and led to waves of ire in the state over the abrupt, Donald Trump-backed moves.” SF Gate.
Yes, that’s smart. About as smart as giving a toddler the keys to your car and telling them to go get more beers.
As smart of pointing a loaded gun at your own head.
Trump released water from those northern California reservoirs to fight the fires in southern California. That’s like sending a traffic cop to direct traffic in Pittsburgh when the accident is in Baltimore.
It will not help fight the fires in SoCal in any way, shape, or form. Instead, Trump has released water that planned for watering crops in the warm months of the year. You know, the months when rain and snow is not falling. During growing season. So he may have damaged the crops for the year by his brash foolhardiness.
Further, water in those reservoirs is used to fight wildfires in the north during wildfire season.
So, bang, bang, bang, that self-certified genius did damage to California, people’s safety and livelihood, and to the nation’s economy with one effort from his dim-witted brain.
How would it affect the nation’s economy? Simple supply and demand: less food causes less supply causes higher prices. They produce almonds, milks, grapes, walnuts, cherries, eggs and chickens, tomatoes, blueberries, and hay. No one uses those things, right?
Such a waste of BTW, San Jaoquin Valley voted Trump into office.
Greetings from snowy Ashland. It’s Wenzda, February 5, 2025. Our first snowstorm of 2025 came in, kicked our asses, stamped its feet, and moved on.
The entire time that it snowed, there was no wind. The snow fell straight down. The temperatures hung between 31 and 33 degrees. When the snow ceased late yesterday afternoon, the light shifted. Rosy hues colored the snow. Probably sunset from behind clouds, I speculated. Then, it all went gray.
Next, the temperature, released from its obligation to remain at freezing while the snow fell, shed nine degrees in three hours. Clouds now sail through blue skies and sunshine. Trees and utility lines are shedding large clumps of melting snow. It’s up to 29 degrees F. A high of 38 F is possible, ‘they’ tell us. When all the snow stopped falling, my yard was buried under 14 inches.
Watching all that snow falling yesterday, my wife summarized the day well for us: “I guess it’s good to be retired and not need to go anywhere.”
Yes, good thing, because the storm dropped a ton of chaos on our little town. White stuff falling from the sky really confused people’s sensibilities. Didn’t help that the city on which we depend on services seemed really confused by what was happening. Or maybe it was people out sick, miscommunications, or people overcome with two much going on. Roads weren’t getting plowed — no, some roads were getting plowed. Several roads were plowed over and over while other roads, particularly on the newer south end of town, didn’t see plows at all. For the record, our road was just plowed for the first time. It’s not a major matter, as it’s not that long and only has about forty houses on it.
FB photo of I-5 in the valley not far from Ashland. If you zoom in on the road, you’ll see what looks like a train. Those are actually semis stopped in traffic because the Interstate is closed.
Other factors threw complications into the mix. Trees and branches found new resting places on the ground. So did power lines. People who lived on hills parked down where the roads were flat and walked home. Snow convinced some folks to just stop their cars where they were and walk away.
Without much local media, we were at a disadvantage. The city did nothing to bridge that gap. We have an emergency text message system but that wasn’t engaged much, other to say, “It’s snowing. Stay home.” Our best tool turned out to be Facebook. Friends in three other parts of town reported their situation. Between the four of us, we could compare notes and track developments.
One thing that puzzled my household as we surveyed activities from our window: why were so many people out in light jackets without hats and gloves?
But it’s over. Lessons learned? Probably not.
Our snowstorm stirred memories of another snowstorm. This one was in 1978. I’d just returned from a tour of duty in the Philippines. My wife was living with her family in WV while I was overseas. Now, with me back in the U.S., we bought a car and were driving to a new duty location by San Antonio, Texas. A huge blizzard struck. We made the decision to get the hell out of there and drove several hundred miles through blinding snow.
Thinking back on that time, I looked through a pop list, remembering songs. I’d been overseas. This was pre-Internet, pre-satellite TV, etc. When I returned to the U.S., I felt a deep disconnection with the nation. Looking at a list of songs from that time, I saw “Follow You Follow Me”. I know the song but there’s no memories connected to it, much like a lot of music I know from that period. It’s just there, floating in my mind, unmoored to anything.
One good thing emerging from the two snow days for us is that we used the time to clean the oven and pantry. My wife was the major mover on the pantry, emptying it, tossing outdated stuff, wiping the shelves. I only helped with the reorg and handing things to her.
The bad thing about the snow days is that she kept getting sucked into the bad news cycle. Infuriating to watch the checks and balances disintegrating in the face of GOP complicity.
Coffee and I have ran into each other in the kitchen, so we sat and had a cup to talk about the day. Hope you enjoy a good one. Cheers
Time’s spend has changed since I was a child. Then I came to understand, oh, it’s not time that changed, it’s me. Time speeds up as we age. But with time passing, I also gain greater perspective. I can look back at certain events and interactions and comprehend them with better insights because my life’s experiences expanded my base of understanding.
And I have found that I can keep learning. But changing? Changing also becomes harder as I age. It seems like I’m like water. Like a stream, I was looking for my course to follow. Once finding it, I don’t want to leave it.
Time’s passing also changed perspectives on fashion. I’m less enthused about dressing to impress others these days and more focused on being comfortable. I can more easily shrug off others’ opinions of me because I know how transitory and incidental these things are.
My final observation was that I didn’t really fully appreciate my body when I was younger. As I aged, different alarms went off at specific times, triggering events and changes that I never expected. Like my metabolism jumping off a cliff. And my prostate en
Today is Twosda, Feb. 4, 2005. It’s 33 F outside in Ashlandia and ‘they’ are suggesting our high temp will be in the upper thirties.
You want snow? We got snow. Wet, heavy snow. Eight to ten inches of it surrounds my house. Far as I can see across the neighborhood, that’s the same for them. It’s like Nature had a to-do list to deliver snow to us in January. Then, realizing that hadn’t crossed off the list, made up for it with one super load. More snow is falling as I write.
Trees and bushes are bending the knee under the snow’s oppressive weight. Trees have gone down, taking power lines. We endured two short power outages. Each lasted just long enough to reset everything. Others were not so lucky and missed power for four or five hours. More disturbing, shelters weren’t open for the homeless. Reasoning for that varies: no volunteers for it said one place while the city shelter said, it’s contracted to an outside organization and is only open at night. Because, it said, other places like the library are open in the day. That’s the kind of irritating thining that has us rubbing our faces and sighing. I remember this discussion and the objections, but what if the library and those other places are forced to close? That was tutted aside. Sure, let’s plan for the best scenarios, and not the worse.
We also have multiple vehicle accident and stuck vehicles. Been a while since we’ve had snow and it shows. While we have four snowtrucks and drivers to plow the roads, little of that seemed to be done yesterday.
Schools are closed and classs are canceled, if you’re wondering. Not even doing it over the net. And I will also stay home. Write here, if I can. Well, I can, but sometimes *ahem* my household’s other occupants are oblivious to the writing process *ahem*. Yes, I’m whining. I’ll endure and get sumpin’ done.
The Neurons have pulled up a 1992 song and slipped into into my morning mental music stream. I played it once before, in 2021, during COVID shutdowns, when we were social distancing. “These Are Days” is by 10,0000 Maniacs. It’s a song about things happening that you’ll remember and look back upon. It’s an upbeat song about having happy times and remembering them.
Ironically, of course, the song came to me as I perused news that sickened me about what’s being done, supposedly to counter ‘woke’ ideology’, by the Trump administration. ‘These are they days.’ Decades of progress, plans, actions, and history are being chewed up and spit out because it’s ‘not aligned’ to Trump’s values and visions. His efforts are about as misguided as the invasion of Iraq over WMDs that didn’t exist, attacking them over Iraq’s part in an attack on the U.S. that they didn’t do, and is as deep in understanding as relabeling French fries as ‘freedom fries’. I remember, too, that George Dubya Bush claimed afterward that they never said there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. Rewriting history. Look at the toll of that war.
And here we go, down another dark, more twisted rabbit hole.
And cue sigh. Here’s the music.
Two last comments before closing. One is about the War in Iraq. I had a friend who commented a few years after the war, they had us all fooled.
That pissed me off. No. They did not. There was a large segment of us who were not fooled. We raged against the war. We marched in the streets, wrote letters, held vigils, and tried to tell the rest of you. You laughed and dismissed us.
The other comment is that many disparaged President Biden’s efforts to address COVID-19. They raged that President Biden was destroying the United States. Yet, we ended up in better shape than most, with fallig unemployment, an improving economy, and a rising stock market (for what that’s worth). But Trump cheerleaders bemoaned the price of eggs and how much it took to fill the gas tank. And they fooled enough people that here we are.
Twenty years from now, I hope I’m here to look back and remember what was said and done, because I think a lot of people will work hard to re-write history. Hell, there is a small chunk of Americans who think that Trump was a great POTUS and did everything he promised in his first term.
One thing has been hanging on my to-do list for years.
I must get rid of my old computers.
I’ve been using my current laptop for ten years. It replaced a laptop which replaced a laptop which replaced a tower.
I still have all of those computers which I replaced. They’re neatly stacked in a hutch.
Besides those, I have my wife’s MacBooks. She’s on number four since 2001 and numbers one, two, and three are part of the pile. My main thing is that I want to pull all those hard drives before I get rid of the computers. Then I’ll wipe the hard drives and get rid of them. Sure, I can pay people to do that sort of thing for me but I’m a staunch DIYer.
So it hasn’t been done. They’re a permanent part of my “to-do list”. Someday, though someday…
“It sure is coming down,” my wife declared a while ago. It’s an expression we heard often from our parents. I don’t hear many say it any longer.
Watching the snow, she chose to walk to her exercise class. It’s about .6 miles. She caught a ride back home.
“How was your walk?” I asked.
“Slippery! It’s very slick on the sidewalks. The roads don’t look too bad.”
That was three hours ago. The roads have gotten worse. Snow hasn’t ceased. The temperature continues to hang around 32-33 F. All of this triggers memories of snowstorms I’ve endured. It’s good to have experience but one thing that you learn from experience with this sort of weather conditions is that anything can happen without warning.
Michael Seidel, writer 