Month: December 2022

Water was back on at a little after1600 yesterday.  I spent the day starting to re-adjust to the change in water routine.  Thankful this didn’t happen when we were also doing the Spring Forward thing.  Adjusting to semi-major changes one at a time is enough.

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Jettus came to the back door to let me know about the water and he came to the back door, came in calling out “It’s Jettus” (as I told him to do when he was bringing me drinking and cooking water) and shut off the kitchen water faucet for me which I had left running to let me know the water was back. 

I had been jostled awake around 0300 by my phone telling me there was an earthquake and I should take cover.  

I felt the movement. 

Then I had been edgy all morning, probably feeling aftershocks subliminally as a result of growing up on a farm where a section of the San Andreas fault ran through the lower pig and cow areas and minor shakes were not uncommon.

I was napping when Jettus got here about the water after getting to sleep at ~1300 following being awake for such a long time after the earthquake notice.  Consequently I was a bit groggy and he was in a hurry. 

National news this evening showed a lot of damage in Yreka and made a big thing of the two deaths down river in Happy Camp neither of which were caused directly by the quake but due to their existing medical problems needing attention and help was unable to reach them due to road damage caused by the quake, so I guess it’s true their deaths were quake caused. 

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I don’t have a menorah but do have a candle in the office window along with a sign wishing all a Happy Hanukkah.

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Weather has been staying not much above freezing for over a week now.  Snow on the porch is between 3 and 4 feet deep but with an ice coating. Am trying to get up courage enough to test it and go out to hang a bird feeder.  The early birds are getting anxious and flying over to see if the feeder has been hung out yet.

Maybe the solution is to take off the screen on the window through which I could reach the hanger and hang myself out that window.  

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I recently saw a hand decorated Christmas tree competition being held in the Medford Armory.  It was won by a tree about six feet tall with a nice number of mixed coloured led lights, some decorations looking to be family favourites from the past mixed with store bought ones, and a small village with an HO scale model train running around it.

It made me a bit teary since it looked so much like the ones George and I had for so many years.

The winner also made me sort of sad about all the Commercial trees epitomized by the extremely tall tree between the skating rink and the NBC studio windows in New York City which makes me wonder every year why such a big deal is made over finding the just perfect tree and then covering it in so many lights you can’t see the tree.

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 Trump’s Marvel cards, at least the ones I’ve not been able to avoid seeing, are textbook examples of Narcissist behaviour, i.e unable to function unless he is the absolute center of everything and believes everything he wants is owed to him.  Poor man can’t seem to help himself or stop making a fool of himself regardless. 

Reminded me of Putin’s need to be the alpha male and having no idea what to do when he is forced to admit he has in the past and, much like Trump, is currently making a fool of himself.

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Hanukkah began last sunday and will end next monday the 26th…

Although I don’t have a Hanukkah menorah, I do have a single candle in a jar in the window and it will have to do.  

Chag Urim Sameach !!! 

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And a thought for the coming week ..

 Don’t wait for things to get simpler, easier, better.

Life will always be complicated.

Learn to be happy right now.

Otherwise, you’ll run out of time.

So ‘til next week …

 This has been a difficult week to describe. 

We have had a snow and ice week.  First, just when it got a little way past the owner/landlord’s house and vehicle access, the Village equipment broke down.  That left me and Jennie, both of whom are movement challenged, with a problem of no way to get from our doors to the street.  

Remembering how George and I would start preparing for heavy snow the end of October/early September knowing a snow crisis might not occur but wanting to be ready if it did with the needed equipment and food stock for at least three months prepared.  I remember the year we were snowed in from just after Christmas until the end of March with the only way out and back in was a trip in a small trailer in back of the tractor on top of the 8 to 10 foot snow.  We had left a street vehicle parked out near the paved road.  George would drop us off so the boys could get to meet the school bus.  Then George and I would go back home where I would sleep on the days I had worked the night/graveyard shift and George would go out on the clearing equipment to work at moving the drifts in the road from our driveway down the hill as far as possible until it was time to pick up the boys to bring them home up and get ready to do the whole routine again to get me out if it was a work night for me.  George would go back to work until dark when he would come in for dinner and all of us  who could sleep until time to do it again.  

So this snow wasn’t near that difficult but I was so much younger then.

To add to the difficulty, the Service District came into the Village and straight ploughed the streets creating berms   pile of crusty snow 3 to 4 foot high which then iced over making it difficult to clear by hand,had been tracked by the local pick-up trucks driving in a pattern to make a wide enough track for trucks and some of the other vehicles to get in and out, but that was before the service district went through.

Mark was here monday and started to dig a narrow path from the street to my carport  and broke his snow shovel in the process.

I know … kvetch kvetch kvetch.

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But on to something else, although I must admit a lot of my thoughts are centred around the above.

Tuesday was clear and bright and cold but not as cold as it had been.  High yesterday was 38 at 1421.
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Today is the 10th Anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre. I remember that at that time there was a movement for everyone who chooses to participate should choose one of the children killed that day and remember them every day on the anniversary.  I chose two little girls thinking that even not enough people were doing that memorial, maybe by doing two I would cover for someone who chose to not be involved and another child would be remembered.

I chose two little girls, one named Ana 

and  one named Gracie 

Their  pictures are in one of my collections and so are remembered randomly year after year.

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Interesting also yesterday was an announcement by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that the fusion question leading to the real possibility of a powerful, non polluting source of power has been solved.  As I understand it the byproducts are helium, an inert nontoxic gas, and energy.  

Scientists are really excited and they are rarely if not never excited enough to release this kind of news without a lot of testing and retesting.

Following this will be exciting to watch for any further developments. 
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Remember my post about the skiing “infantry” 10th Mountain Division in the Italian mountain campaigns during WWII?  Well, the History channel picked up the ball and is producing a program about those specially trained troops and their involvement in that part of the war.  I failed to copy the link but pictures of them and an article is on the NPR All Things Considered “Special Stories Battles on the Slopes “dated 21 September 2007 and on the History Channel as well.  

It is a little known interesting story much like that of the Navajo Code Talkers.
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I am awaiting the release of The Glass Onion on Netflix a day or two before Christmas.

I am not interested in the publicity mess of the crybabies on Netflix and am sad at the spoiled younger marriage partner who is making $$$$$ bad mouthing the older women in his line after naming his daughter after both of them. 

It may be mean spirited but I keep wondering who hired the photographer to always be there ready to capture the cuddly times and the tears?  

Remember, a well trained actress can cry on cue. 

I do remember someone saying something to the point that an actress is to bed but not to marry since she will always be her main and probably sole concern in anything she does.

I know I’m judging.  

Oh well …  

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Another show to watch for was the meteor show tuesday night near midnight before the nearly full moon comes up.

I remember spending meteor nights in the bed of the pickup truck out in the meadow at the farm with the grandchildren and my Aussie. 

I enjoyed those nights but it was too cold here last night to go out. 

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And a thought for the coming week ..

Only people who aren’t happy with themselves are mean to others.

So ‘til next week …

4” of new snow when I got up last thursday.

Steve out ploughing Village streets and my driveway by 0945.  

Glaring sun off and on.

Ominous sky saturday morning … very light snow only about 1” overnight with more expecting heavier snow beginning later.

Another 4” on top of the partially melting snow sunday and still snowing.  Satellite tv (DirectTv) out due to the overnight storm.  Phone still working.

Monday unknown amount of overnight snow.  Lightly falling snow when I awoke.  Snowing heavily by 0900.  

I need to get a standup yardstick similar to the one George used out at the farm and put it where I can see it from in the house.

Still monday morning and snowing heavily.  Power support generator came on at about 1030 but was on for less than three or four minutes.

Snow stopped about 1400.

Tuesday morning bright.  No measurable new overnight snow.  Trash pickup scheduled for monday afternoons arrived about 0945 tuesday morning and got stuck where only Village pickup trucks had been able to open a path.  Village snow removal equipment still out of commission. 

Thursday morning … no change in Village snow status.  Still too cold for morning walkabouts. 

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Pearl Harbor anniversary … December 7th along with Full Cold/Oak Moon.

George and I would always watch ToraToraTora on the 7th.  Watching was always knee jerk bitter and full of memories. 

Both sides made so many mistakes based on assumptions.  The death totals might have been even higher had the tiger not been awakened as an evaluation of the impending war attributed to Admiral Yamamoto. 

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My covid med finished saturday.  No more bad mouth.  No more runny nose either, only the normal morning sinus cleaning.  I retested sunday noon and my post-med test was negative.

Mark is on Paxlovid also and finished his 5 days on sunday.

John has had Covid more than once probably due to his compromised immune system.  He may have what is being called Long Covid.

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Another family genealogist and I have been trying to track proof of the mid-years of a shared ancestor named Cuthbert Sims.  So far without success.  

We have his Revolutionary War pay records and hospital time in Pennsylvania near the end of the war and probable discharge site and tax records in New Jersey during the very late 1770s and enumerated in the 1830 census which has only his name and not those of the others in the census list and several more tax list years in the early 1780s and then he disappears until he applies for a pension in 1818/1835.  Empty years .. no marriage records nor any recorded birth records of children.  Somerset County New Jersey records and church records for the church cited in the pension request (which was granted) have disappeared.  

Next trace is when a woman named Catherine married an ancestor of one of my Garrison ancestors (Daniel S. Garrison) naming Cuthbert Sims as her father.  

As noted previously, there is no record of her birth, but a younger brother of Daniel Garrison gave one of his sons Sims as a middle name possibly in honor to the sister-in-law?

Keep researching.

Oh well …

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And a giggle for for the upcoming week … https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/12/06/conductor-goes-nuts-moos-cprog-orig-bdk.cnn?utm_term=167041345023052b9f5714468&utm_source=cnn_Five+Things+for+Wednesday%2C+December+7%2C+2022&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=SpQCbpTGxAfnkqohOBiwfALZEVpTO0X0ouCQmo%2F%2FKEN5YoWKevTnm3mcnwHgGnqH&bt_ts=1670413450233

Or check out CNN’s Breakfast Browse online for 7 December.

So ‘til next week …

Interesting Thanksgiving …

John was here on Wednesday.  He spent some time trying to prune the  Butterfly Bush outside the Office window.  It, like all the other plants I inherited with the house, evidently had not had any attention since the previous owner died, or maybe not even before that.

So John plans to do a pruning for shape next Spring.

And he moved the roses off the porch and along the east side of the house where they will get sun and be protected from frost to their roots.  

We then had chat time part of which was the new movie Glass Onion which we are both interested in seeing so we agreed to go see at a matinee in the local theatre as soon as it is available.  Maybe with popcorn and a drink included.

Wednesday followed with thursday morning spent in contact with scattered family and friends.  Then I did a solo walkabout which ended at dinner with Jenny and her mother.  It was a pleasant couple of hours … good food and conversation.

Mark, Kamille, and Francis spent the day helping the local Resource Center serve Thanksgiving dinner to those who were burned out by the Mill fire.  Then the volunteers were able to feast on the leftovers. 

Friday they spent the day here and I had a good day being skunked by Francis four to two playing dominos while Kamille had to work on homework for the classes she is taking on line and preparing the class plans for the class she is teaching at the middle school so there was not too much time to visit with her.  

Mark and I had time to talk after he replaced the connections to the lamp I am using as my bedside light for reading which was a rather scary fire hazard having been repaired by Nana who knows how long ago with tape and mismatched prongs on the wall plug.  

Who knows how many years it had been since she last fixed it but it is now safe.

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Monday morning I went out for the walkabout but was able to do only one full round due to wind.  I gave up after just one round. There were gusts of up to 50 miles per hour, enough that when I was walking into the wind I had to put my walking cane in front of me in order to keep my balance.  The aspen are nearly all bare which makes it mostly clear for the view of the Mountain. 

The weather reports were for not more than 38º all day which made for interesting wind chill readings.  

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Recently there was another derailment at Cantara Loop on the railroad line between Mt Shasta and Dunsmuir.  The last time that happened the train was carrying a hazard load of thousands of gallons of herbicide into the Sacramento River.

More than 19,000 gallons of a soil sterilizer and weed killer called Vapam was leaked into the river on the evening of July 14, 1991 killing fish and vegetation and sickening hundreds of people in the Dunsmuir and Sweetbriar area.  

More than a million fish and tens of thousands of amphibians and crayfish were killed by the spill. Millions of aquatic invertebrates including insects and mollusks were lost according to the final report penned by the Cantara Trustee Council which was formed to address restoration, land acquisition and protection, research and public education. 

In addition, hundreds of thousands of willows, alders, and cottonwoods eventually died.   

Fortunately this time the load was less lethal.

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John was here last wednesday and gave me a gift … he moved the roses into a protected place under the carport where they will be protected from frost and he moved hand gardening stuff I had not yet been able to move from the porch to the shed.  

He also finished pruning the butterfly bush where I had been unable to reach and will be back in Spring to do shape pruning in preparation for new growth.

We then had time for a chat which had been out of reach for a few weeks.

He had previously introduced me to Knives Out, a fun murder mystery movie with a typical disfunctional family.

The followup movie Glass Onion was released to theatres on Thanksgiving.  John and I will go see it at a theatre matinee as soon as we can and be home before it gets too dark now that standard time is now in place.  

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 The following is a personal opinion …

There was a report on the news that so far there have been more than 600 mass shootings this year which makes the total more than two a day although there was recently a day with three lethal incidents.

That statistic indicates 49 deaths per day.

Gun owners seem to always cite the 2nd amendment as the “right” to own and/or carry guns of any kind.  

Interesting that they cite but fail to prove any …well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I wonder how many of those people using the 2nd amendment are members of the National Guard or any other “well regulated militia”.

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Too busy for editing. Sorry.

To end this week here’s a thought for the upcoming Solstice …

When we walk to the edge of all the light we have

And take that step into the darkness of the unknown,

We must believe that one of two things will happen –

There will be something for us to stand on

Or we will be taught how to fly.

  — Patrick Overton

What is your thought concerning which will be the result of the choice we are facing. 

So ‘til next week …