Strand of Names

This is almost too easy. What cock-twattle stupidity did Trump spew yesterday? Did he "joke" about the holocaust to Jewish executives? No, that was Monday's old news. Did he say, "We will not forget the injustice of 2020; we will avenge it in November?” No, that was his imbecilic and sycophantic minion Charlie Kirk, speaking at the Turning Point Action convention. 

Here we go: yesterday, he claimed that he had been tortured while he was briefly detained and processed following his arrest here in Georgia for the "find me 11,000 votes" trial. “I want you to remember what they did to me. They tortured me in the Fulton County Jail, and TOOK MY MUGSHOT,” Trump wrote in an email trying to sell coffee cups with his infamous mugshot picture on them.

For the record, Trump was booked, fingerprinted, and photographed for his mug shot all within 20 minutes, according to Fulton County records. Doesn't leave much time for torture. Trump was quickly released, and was in and out of the jail in less than a half hour.

If I were assigned to torture Trump, it would take me a lot longer than 20 minutes. To paraphrase Marcellus Wallace, I'd have to call a couple of hard, pipe-hitting motherfuckers from East Atlanta to get all medieval on that Cheeto's ass with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. 

That may not sound very Buddhist of me, but I said "if" I were assigned to torture Trump, so it's all hypothetical. Come the revolution, I sincerely doubt anyone will be calling on me to do the torture.

But in the pampered an privileged life of Donald Trump, being detained for 20 minutes to be fingerprinted, photographed, and processed must have felt like torture. To him, that WAS torture. He wasn't in complete control, surrounded by mindless minions at his beck and call, and he probably wasn't given even one Big Mac for nearly a half hour.

All joking aside, I sincerely hope that during this week's presidential debate, Joe Biden uses Trump's claim of torture to taunt him and tell him that he (Biden) knew a man, John McCain, who had actually been tortured and that he (Trump) was no John McCain. That should make the whiney little bitch melt down on stage.    

Day of the Millrace

The challenge the press faces when covering Donald Trump is that his lies are so brazen and so frequent and so obviously disprovable, both the public and the press eventually get numb and conclude, "Well, that's just the way he is," and stop talking about them. Ditto his racism, misogyny, antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Case in point: Trump claims he is the more "pro-Israel" candidate and it's his opponents that are actually the antisemites. He has argued that Jewish Americans who vote Democratic hate both Israel and Judaism, saying that he and his Republican party are better placed to help end the Gaza war. Yet Barbara Res, a lead engineer on the construction of Trump Tower, relates an appalling story in her memoir, Tower of Lies.  

“We had just hired a residential manager, a German guy,” she writes, “And Donald [Trump] was bragging among – to us executives, there were four of us – about how great the guy was and he was a real gentleman, and he was so neat and clean. And he looked at a couple of our executives who happen to be Jewish, and he said, ‘Watch out for this guy – he sort of remembers the ovens,’ you know, and then smiled."

“Everybody was shocked,” she went on. “I couldn’t believe he said that. But he was making a joke about the Nazi ovens and killing people, and that’s the way he was.”

A man without shame, a man without morals, a man who thinks it's "funny" to invoke the Holocaust to Jewish executives meeting a new German counterpart. 

Outrage over this story will last a couple of days and then it will be forgotten as attention moves on to Trump's next lie, his next outrageously racist or antisemitic or authoritarian remark. And then we'll all move on from there.   

I remember a time in the not-so-distant past when a single remark like that would be enough to cause a politician to resign or drop out of a race. But a man without shame or any sense of conscience shrugs it off, doubles down on his offensiveness, and moves on, and the press just follows along. 

Through the Thin Words

Really. It's time to get rig of that fanatical cult and its imbecilic leader.  This is what happens when you let stupid people into politics and the press is too squeamish to point out that not only are their opinions wrong, but they're based on false narratives and a fraudulent telling of history.

There are differences of opinion, but not all opinions are equally thought out and valid. MAGA is what happens when society lets go of standards for an "anything goes" attitude. It's what happens when journalism just report the news, but doesn't analyze events. 

Idiocracy is not going to happen on my watch. 

Eighth Ocean

See what I mean? These Ocean days, once a very orderly occurrence following each twelfth day of the year, now seem to come up randomly in the Universal Solar Calendar.

Which is auspicious for us because it gives us the opportunity to enjoy Elaine Radigue's Occam VIII, performed by Deborah Walker.

Spirit Woman

Happy summer solstice! It may be the first day of summer for those of you on the Gregorian calendar but to those of us on the Universal Solar Calendar its been summer since Day of the Iron Scepter (May 26). Today, Spirit Woman, we're 27 days into the USC summer, so the hot temperatures don't seem so unseasonably warm.

About 100 million Americans are under hot-weather advisories today as the blistering heat wave continues for its fifth straight day, evidence that summer has, if fact, been here for a while.  The risk associated with the heat index here in Atlanta is in the extreme caution range (possible risk of heat stroke, heat cramps or heat exhaustion after long exposure or exercise), although the current heat wave has largely spared the South - temperatures in much of New England were hotter than Georgia this week. 

Today's my scheduled 5-mile walk and I'll still do it despite the extreme caution warning, or to be more precise, I'll do it observing the suggested caution. I'll take the Chattahoochee trail, but I'll stick to the well-shaded, riverside part of the trail and avoid the 1-mile unshaded, inland stretch. It's really not a pleasant stretch of trail anyway - basically a clear-cut path for a Plantation Pipeline gas line. Besides, a layer of cool air usually hangs right over the water in the mountain-fed river, and a breeze is often blowing downstream. In the shade along the river, it often feels at least 5 degrees cooler than the regional temperature, while the brutal Georgia sun along the backstretch makes it feel 10 degrees warmer. I'll be okay. The forecasts show the heat index increasing over the coming week, so I'm best off walking today and taking the subsequent days as they come.

There's a low-pressure cell about 120 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida, and today the Air Force flew one of their hurricane-hunter airplanes through the area. They found 35-mph winds and a well-defined center of circulation, but decided the storm is not quite organized enough to be classified as a tropical depression. However, it's not too far off from being one and even a small increase in organization could elevate it to that status before it makes landfall in northeastern Florida or Georgia tonight.

Instead and Else

Louisiana is arguably the least educated of the 50 United States. Nearly a quarter of all high school students don't graduate, it ranks 49th in the percentage of college graduates, and education spending has been frozen for most of the past decade.

It's produced House Speaker Mike Johnson. I rest my case.

The Louisiana legislature recently passed a bill requiring all classrooms in the state to display a copy of the Ten Commandments, a Bronze Age code of ethics that doesn't even have an injunction against slavery. Short of outright murder, there is nothing prohibiting child abuse, physical or sexual. There's nothing prohibiting rape, as long as it doesn't involve outright murder or include someone else's spouse. It perpetuates social control, establishing a sole religion and the absolute rule of authority. No wonder right-wingers love it.

I could own a slave, rape that slave, then rape my neighbor's daughter, and finally beat and threaten any children that observed my actions, all without violating any of the Commandments. I would still be a godly person, a faithful servant of the lord. Ridiculous.

Since we are a pluralistic society with no state-established religion, I propose that all classrooms also include the ten Zen Buddhist precepts:   

1. Respect life – Do not kill
2. Be giving – Do not steal
3. Honor the body – Do not misuse sexuality
4. Manifest truth – Do not lie
5. Proceed clearly – Do not cloud the mind
6. See the perfection – Do not speak of others' errors and faults
7. Realize self and others as one – Do not elevate the self and blame others
8. Give generously – Do not be withholding
9. Actualize harmony – Do not engage in anger
10. Experience the intimacy of things – Do not defile the myriad things

The precepts are different from the commandments because they are presented as orders from a Supreme Being but rather simply guidance for a harmonious life. They actually started as monastic rules for monks to observe for peacefully living together. They've been adapted, pared down, and refined for everyday life, and if you violate a precept, it's not a "sin," - life is just that much less harmonious that it would have been otherwise.  

I also like that they're all expressed not merely in negative terms, e.g., "don't do this" and "don't do that," but also in positive terms. e.g., "do this" and "do that." "Respect life" goes well beyond merely not killing.

Hanging the Ten Precepts in every Louisiana classroom wouldn't even violate the First Amendment, as there's nothing explicitly "religious" in any of them - no mention of a God or injunction to worship one over another. It may come from a religious source, but there's nothing inherently "religious" about it.

Of course, it will never happen. People are stupid.

The Millstone Lure

To no one's surprised, it's been confirmed that May 2024 was the hottest month of May on record. The average global temperature last May was 2.12° F above the 20th-century average of 58.6. The month marked the 12th-consecutive month of record-high temperatures for the planet.

Also as expected, that broad area of low pressure over the Bay of Campeche has developed into Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the season. Heavy rainfall associated with Alberto will impact large regions of Central America, north across northeastern Mexico and into South Texas. This rainfall will likely produce considerable life-threatening flash and urban flooding along with river flooding and mudslides near areas of higher terrain across the Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, including the cities of Monterrey and Ciudad Victoria. Moderate coastal flooding is likely along much of the Texas coast through Thursday. Tornadoes are possible today and tonight across parts of deep-south and southeast Texas.

For those of us on the Universal Solar Calendar, the 2024 Hurricane Season started on the Fifth Day of the Icon and will last all the way until the sounding of the Winter Drum. 

Impermanence is swift: yesterday, Willie Mays, Anouk Aimée, and James Chance (of James Chance and the Contortions) passed away.  I saw James Chance perform at Atlanta's 688 club in '82 or '83. It was an insane show and I danced with a zombie. Here's a video from that time of him performing as "James White" in Paris. For some reason, French videos always seem to start with long verbal introductions and this one cuts at the very end to a performance by Nick Cave for some reason. Regardless, you'll get the idea of the kind of fire Chance (aka White) was playing with live on stage that night in 1982 (or '83).

  

Day of the Beach-Head

 

The Boston Celtics are the 2024 NBA Champions.

The Celtics won Game 5 of the Finals last night, 106-88, 16 years to the day after the last time the team won a Finals series.

To get there, the Celtics beat the Miami Heat in the Quarterfinals, 4 games to 1, and then the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Semifinals, also by a 4-to-1 margin. After they swept the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Championship, skeptics claimed that no team ever had an easier path to the Finals, and that the East was a weak conference compared to the West. "Celtics are the Conference Champions?," someone posted on the Lakers' subreddit. "That's embarrassing for the East."  

"Boston Celtics fans have no idea what's about to happen to  their team," the skeptics claimed as the Celtics headed into the Finals against Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving, and the Dallas Mavericks.

It turns out the Mavs were the ones who had no idea what was going to happen. The team ran into a brick wall of tenacious defense unlike anything they'd seen before. And that's the problem with the NBA Western Conference - the teams are all showy offense with scoring leaders putting up eye-popping numbers, but the teams don't play defense. It's never easy, but it's less difficult to put up 30 points per game when no one's guarding you.

Watch some of the highlight clips from the Finals. When the Celtics are scoring, Dončić is just standing there watching, while Kyrie is wildly waving his arms around in random directions, often nowhere near the scoring player or the ball. It looks like he's playing D, but he's defending ghosts.  And you can say that Dončić at least got downcourt - I'll grant him that much - but he's just standing there slack-jawed, hoping the laws of physics kick a random rebound or an errant pass in his direction.

The Mavs did play defense in Game 4 and it won them the game, 122-84, but it was only out of desperation after they'd fallen behind to the Celtics, 0-3, were facing elimination, and coach Jason Kidd was probably screaming at them in the locker room to play some D, goddammit!

I've heard Stephen A. Smith, Charles Barkley, and the rest of the Inside the NBA pundits all claim the Celtics didn't have that championship spark in them. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are nice guys, they claimed, likeable persons who you'd be glad to have a beer with, but they didn't have that mean-ass competitive spirit that defined champions like Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. "They don't have the dog in them," as Barkley put it. They're nice guys, they claimed, but nice guys finish last.

Tatum and Brown proved them wrong. They showed that it's possible to win the big games without having a borderline personality. Sometimes, the good guys do win and personally, I'd rather have another NBA title banner than a sociopath superstar.

Anyway, here's to the Boston Celtics, the 2024 NBA Champions.

Day of the High Lists

We're only two weeks into the 2024 Hurricane Season and satellite imagery and surface observations have already identified a broad area of low pressure over the Bay of Campeche that may gradually develop into the first tropical depression or tropical storm of the season by midweek. The system will move slowly westward or northwestward toward the western Gulf coast and several days of heavy rainfall are expected across portions of southern Mexico and Central America, possibly causing life-threatening floods.  Heavy rainfall is also expected to spread over portions of the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Mexico by the middle of the week and gale warnings have been issued for portions of the Gulf. An Air Force Hurricane Hunter has been dispatched to investigate the system later today.

In addition, a separate area of cloudiness and thunderstorms currently located several hundred miles east of the Bahamas is associated with a surface trough and an upper-level area of low pressure. Conditions could be conducive for development of this system during the next few days while it moves westward or west-northwestward towards the coast of the southeast U.S. on Thursday or Friday.

Temperatures could set a new record today in Pittsburgh, and Detroit could endure its hottest day in 12 years as people in the Northeast and Midwestern U.S. are being told to prepare for days of extreme heat. Temperatures of 105°F are possible in some areas.  Triple-digit readings were recorded in Phoenix and daily records were broken across the Southwest during a heat wave earlier this month, two weeks before the official start of summer. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of climate change, and people in the affected areas are advised to limit outdoor activity and stay hydrated.

Elsewhere in the country, firefighters are battling a wildfire north of Los Angeles that has forced hundreds of people to leave their homes. Known as the Post Fire, it has burned about 15,000 acres of land so far and is only 2% contained.

We know all this because of the good men and women working in the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center, and NOAA. Bless the U.S. government and its knowledgeable and competent workers.

Day of All Hawks

 

My perseverance wins! After sticking to my schedule and walking my appointed 5 miles yesterday despite the 100° heat index, today I weighed myself at 199.2 pounds, the first time I've been under 200 since starting my exercise, diet  and daily checks on my vitals. Possibly my first time under 200 in at least ten years.

More good news: now that I've proved to myself that I can do my exercise in 100° heat, tomorrow the forecast high is only 92°, on Wednesday 88°, and Friday "only" 85°. Considering my weight loss, I've proven that the benefits are worth it.  

I added up the miles I've walked since February 1. It's 271 miles. If I started walking in a straight line to the east back on that day, I'd be all the way to Charleston, South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean by now.  

I'm not doing all this merely to reduce my weight out of vanity. My goal is to get my blood glucose and A1C levels down out of the "prediabetic" range and to lower my blood pressure. Weight is just the easiest metric to monitor as I do, and as it turns out the same high-sugar, high-carb food I need to avoid are the same ones dieters avoid to lose weight. My goal is to get down to 180 pounds by the end of August. That might be a little late for swimsuit season, but I still have a chance to wow the gals out by the pool on Labor Day weekend.

For those tempted to try my routine at home, it's simply walk 5 miles every other day and the following diet:

Breakfast: English muffin, toasted, no spread, and two cups of black coffee

Lunch: 5 tablespoons of non-fat yogurt topped with berries (strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries) with a pinch of low-fat granola

Dinner: mixed salad, or brown rice with lentils

Snacks: fresh fruit (bananas, oranges) and roasted, unsalted peanuts

Late-night snack (on those rare occasions when I'm hungry before bed): peanut butter on whole-wheat bread 

Beverages: water and those two cups of black coffee in the morning 

Day of Suffering Night

 

It's hot today, easily the hottest day so far this year although unfortunately probably not the hottest day we'll see this year. The high temperature crested at 96° F and with the humidity, the heat index made it feel like 100°.  

The pretty lady on the local weather advised not to go outside today if you could avoid it, but today I was supposed to do my every-other-day five-mile walk. Since I started, my blood pressure had dropped by 40 points and I've lost 20 pounds. I worry that if I give in and skip a day, I'll skip another, and then another, and before you know it, the pounds will be back and I'll be all hypertensive again. 

There have been plenty of days since I started my walks last March that offered me alibis not to go out - chilly temperatures, rainy forecasts, late sleeping, other things to do and appointments to keep. So far, I've managed to bat away all of those excuses and have not yet missed one of my every-other-day walks.  Forty days so far. I even walked the same day after an in-office surgical procedure to remove a stricture in my urethra. No excuses.

To top it all off, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division issued a Code Orange air-quality alert for today due to ozone levels. According to the EPD, the outdoor air quality is likely to be unhealthy for children, people sensitive to ozone, and people with heart and lung disease. I don't qualify for any of those groups, but between the heat and the ozone, should I really be out walking?

I started at 11:30, earlier than I usually do, and the temperature was already 90°. I brought a bottle of water along with me to stay hydrated. I walked along my nearby Beltline trail instead of the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area because it's better shaded - there's a long, almost one-mile stretch of the Chattahoochee trail that's completely shadeless, and I'd have to walk that stretch  twice to cover my route. By the time I was finished at 1:30, the heat still hadn't reached its daily peak and the Air Quality Index was still in the "moderate" range (Code Yellow). Daily ozone levels are generally highest in the late afternoon or early evening.

It was hot, but it didn't feel Death Valley Days/Mad Max hot. But I proved to myself that I can handle high 90s temperatures and Code Orange ozone, and the next 10 days are forecast to be slightly cooler so if I was able to do it today, there's no reason I can't continue for the next couple of weeks. 

But anyway, damn, it's hot out.      

The Offside Mysteries

When the revolution finally comes and Clarence Thomas tries to escape the country and antifa forces finally catch up, they will pull him and his ridiculous wife out of their gift RV, and shoot them both with the same bump-stock guns that he and the corrupt Supreme Court overturned the ban on today.

If that sounds unnecessarily cruel and not very Buddhist-like, consider the darker thoughts behind the justices as they overturned the ban and made the streets and American life that much more dangerous, that much more violent, that much more deadly. Cloistered and sequestered in their McMansions with private and tax-payer funded security, they cave to political and financial pressures by the NRA and far-right lobbyists. take the checks and luxury gifts, and let ordinary Americans shoot it out in their homes, the streets, and Las Vegas country-music festivals. 

"It's not like they're gonna shoot those things at us," or so they thought.

Day of the Five Lost Havens

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about the two violent incidents that occurred about a block from each other here in Atlanta on Tuesday, a shooting at a food court and a hijacking of a bus, it turns out the events were related to each other after all.

The local news interviewed an eyewitness to the shooting in the Peachtree Center food court. The interviewee was at the court during the shooting, and said that he regretted that he didn't have a gun himself to stop the shooter. He said he had a knife, and maybe could have overpowered the shooter with his knife, but he wasn't allowed to own a gun because he was bipolar and on probation. He also said he was off his meds and was having an episode.

The interview went on, undeterred by the fact that the witness had just said that he had a mental illness and was off his meds. The man rambled on, talking in circles about his probation officer, wanting to protect a girlfriend who he said was visiting him in Atlanta, and about wishing there was some kind of drug he could take to instantly snap him out of the psychotic episode he was having. At the same time, though, he was articulate and even spelled out his last name, and was non-threatening to the reporter. 

Shortly after this interview, he walked a block or so and boarded a Gwinnett County transit bus, where he got into a fight with another passenger.  Another passenger on the bus pulled out a gun, attempting to break up the fight, and the man stole the gun, shot and killed the person who was attempting to break up the fight, and then led police on a chase across three counties. He is now charged with murder, kidnapping, aggravated assault, hijacking, and other charges.

It's not the duty of reporters to enforce laws and prevent crimes, but a person of conscience should have recognized that the man was suffering from a psychotic, bipolar disorder, and try to get him to wait while the reporter called a policeman or other first responder over to help. If the reported had done that, the victim on the bus might still be alive today.

Also. everybody's armed! Customers in a food court, commuters on a bus. If we didn't have so many goddammed guns, none of this may have happened.

And it's still going on.  This morning, police are investigating a reported bomb threat on Peachtree Street, right next to the Peachtree Center food court. The building is home to the Atlanta Passport Agency, the Atlanta branch of the US Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs, and the Urban League of Greater Atlanta. 

Meanwhile, climate change. We're officially a week-and-a-half into the 2024 hurricane season, and while there's no hurricanes yet, an offshore area of low pressure near the Georgia-Florida border is producing  heavy rain across large portions of the Florida peninsula. Despite strong upper-level winds, gradual development is possible  during the next day or so while the system moves to the northeast. Regardless of development, heavy rainfall is forecast to continue. 

Heavy rainfall yesterday caused flash flooding from Fort Lauderdale to downtown Miami, battered major urban areas, caused flight cancellations, and shut down roads, including part of Interstate 95. The floodwaters have swamped shopping strips, submerged cars, and left residents in some neighborhoods waist-deep in floodwater. 

A record 9½ inches of rain fell on Fort Lauderdale Wednesday, breaking a previous record of 5½ inches that had stood since 1978. In two days, more than a foot of rain fell over Miami Beach. Other 48-hour rain totals have almost doubled that amount, with North Miami unofficially receiving 20 inches and Hallandale and Hollywood each receiving 19 inches since Tuesday. 

Also, about 18.2 million people, 6% of the population of the contiguous United States, live in areas expected to have dangerous levels of heat today. The heat index measures how hot it actually feels outside, taking into account humidity (it's not the heat, it's the humidity, as they say). The measurement is used to indicate when the level of heat is dangerous for the human body while in the shade. When out in the sun, a person could perceive that temperature as being higher by up to 15° Fahrenheit.

The heat index for several cities in Texas will be well over 100° today, from 105° in Austin to 109° in Laredo. Here in Atlanta, the heat index will be 90° today, creeping up to 99° on Saturday before cooling off next week. I had better exercise some caution while out on my 5-mile walks this weekend.

Odd Man Out

Yesterday was a just awful day here in Atlanta. A gunman shot three people in the food court at Peachtree Center and in a separate, unrelated incident, another person hijacked a MARTA bus, of all things, and took it on a police chase across three counties and left one person dead.

Four shot, one dead, in two separate acts of senseless gun violence. 

The suspect in the Peachtree Center shooting is a convicted felon who has served prison time for armed robbery and has 11 previous arrests. The suspect in the hijacking case is also a convicted felon who had been arrested 19 times. 

I've been at the food court at Peachtree Center many, many times. It's an integral part of architect John Portman's design, which has been rightfully criticized for turning it's back on the city streets to create its own insular environment. It's most notable feature is a series of skywalks at various levels that connect the different buildings so that people don't have to step outside of the buildings and onto the street. The food court is intended as a substitute for the street-side restaurants and shops one usually finds in a downtown, and you pass through the court on your way from the parking deck or the MARTA station to the first bank of elevators.

To be fair, it's quite pleasant - well lit, easily accessible, lots of seating, and a wide range of dining options on three levels. It's a veritable shoppers' paradise inside, while on the outside, the buildings are non-accommodating, intended to keep motorists driving on past, and they seemingly haven't even considered the possibility of pedestrians. It's a classic urban canyon of tall office buildings surrounding traffic-clogged streets. The trick is to actually find an access point - I usually use a parking deck a block away.

Anyway, the supposed appeal is that white suburbanites can drive in, park in a secured deck, walk through the skyways, and pass through the food court on the way to their white-collar office jobs without ever having to deal with the physical and demographic realities of downtown Atlanta. The irony of yesterday's shooting is that even the cloistered, sequestered food court isn't exempt from the specter of gun violence and urban problems. 

The MARTA bus got hijacked a mere two or so blocks away from Peachtree Center on those mean streets the food court was meant to avoid. Like the streets surrounding the food court, the site of the hijacking is designed to accommodate car-driving commuters more than pedestrians. Sure, there are sidewalks, but there's nothing along the streets that one would want to walk to - it's "pass-through" territory, and you'd do it faster in a car than on foot. The 12- to 16-lane I-75/I-85 Intown Connector is just a block away, and most traffic is either on its way to the highway or just getting off, heading to other places.  

I'm not blaming the poor urban design for yesterday's violence, but I will say that the poor design does nothing to avoid this kind of violence. It's no-man's-land, or the first oasis past no-man's-land. If I were to point a finger of blame, it would be at the proliferation of guns, and a criminal-justice system that allows 11- and 19-time felons to be out on the street and armed.

Anyway, R.I.P to the victim of yesterday's outbreak of gun violence. Impermanence is swift.

The Stagger Litany

The Kenneth A. Kesselring site in West Milton, NY, was originally developed for testing early nuclear reactor designs. In 1950, the Site changed its focus to testing of propulsion systems for the Navy and subsequently to train Naval personnel to operate those systems.

In the 1980s, I managed the Albany office of a large, national environmental consulting company. Naturally, the nearby Kesselring site was one of our target clients - government facilities are notoriously cavalier about their stewardship of the environment and present many lucrative opportunities for cleanup and restoration. During our marketing meetings, we would salivate over the prospect of landing a big, fat government contract for the site.

The problem was security.  Even though the facility was used just for training, because it was a part of the national nuclear defense system, a high-level security clearance was needed to even enter the grounds. But we were determined to get a foot in the door, so we strategized on how to get a coveted security clearance.

After much internal deliberation, the company decided to nominate one employee for clearance. I wanted it to be me, but I was deemed to be too young (mid 30s), too single, too carefree. Instead, they chose Tom, an older, straight-arrow family man. I was disappointed not to have been picked but I understood the logic.

To get the clearance, the candidate had to be vetted by the FBI and convince them he was unlikely to a tempted by bribery or be subjected to blackmail. The concern was they didn't want someone on the facility who'd be tempted to sell secrets, photographs, reports, etc. to foreign agents. They were concerned about debt, gambling debts in particular, but anyone deeply in debt might feel more pressure to sell out than a more financially stable candidate. They were concerned about moral character - a man (or woman) who slept around or hired prostitutes was an easy target for blackmailers. And of course, they didn't want anyone with a criminal record, anyone convicted of a crime, or even anyone who'd been suspected but never convicted of crimes. 

They demanded a candidate who was secure, stable, law-abiding, and honest, and if the FBI had any doubts that a candidate was all of those, they wouldn't be allowed on the Kesselring site. If anyone in our office met those qualifications, it would have been Tom.

The FBI came to our office  and interviewed several employees, including me, about him. It wasn't a polygraph test, but it may as well have been - I sat across the meeting-room table from a stone-faced, unsmiling agent, who maintained constant, nonwavering eye contact as we spoke. It was quite intimidating. Did Tom ever talk about gambling or complain about financial problems? "No, sir." Did I have knowledge of any extramarital affairs or of Tom seeing women other than his wife? "No, sir." Did he ever express any communist sympathies or talk about radical politics? "No, sir." The agent looked me dead in the eye during all of those "No, sirs."

"How would you describe Mr. S_____?," he asked. "Straight-arrow family man," I answered. "Thank you. We're done," he said without a smile or any notable expression on his face.

Tom finally did get the clearance, but an opportunity to do anything with it never materialized. We were never invited to bid on a contract, to visit the site, or use Tom's clearance in any way.

I bring this all up now because of Donald Trump. I can't imagine him ever getting that clearance. Does he have any large debts? Well, he has a crumbling financial operation that's been convicted of fraud. He's been hit with several multi-million suits and settlements, and he well might be tempted to sell secrets or access to relieve himself of some of those debts. He's had frequent contacts with high-level Russian operatives, once even meeting privately with Vladamir Putin himself with no one but a translator present (has anyone checked on that translator recently to see if she's fallen out of a window lately?).

He's a convicted felon on 34 counts. He's on trial, or at least indicted, on numerous other charges. Many of his business associates and political advisors are convicted criminals, and some are even currently doing time in prison.

He's on his third wife, and his felony convictions stem from the coverup of an extramarital affair he had with a porn star while the third wife was pregnant.  He's been accused, many times, of sexual misconduct ranging from groping to assault to rape. Prior to his life in politics, he was a well-known playboy and an associate of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.  

No, Donald Trump is far too compromised to ever get a clearance to even so much as enter the Kenneth A. Kesselring site in West Milton, NY. Why would we make this man our Commander in Chief, give him our nuclear launch codes, and entrust him with our most sensitive nuclear and military secrets?

That would be insane.  

Day of Kings

Wasn't sure what I had set out to write today, but as I settled in I stumbled across this treasury of live Swans recordings and basically lost my mind. Posting will resume when I recover.

Day of the Two Daughters

Food prices are a very tangible way to demonstrate the effects of climate change. For example, a warming climate plus fruit-borne disease and extreme weather events are affecting orange-producing regions in Brazil and Florida, curbing harvests and driving up citrus prices. Orange production plummeted 92% in 20 years in Florida due to freezes, hurricanes and disease

A USDA forecast last year said the Florida orange crop would be the lowest since 1935 — nearly 90 years ago. The average retail price of orange juice frozen concentrate in the U.S. spiked to an all-time high in April — $4.28 per 16 ounces, up from $3.01 a year ago. The global price of oranges is $3.68 per pound for April this year, up from $2.76 per pound a year ago

A wide range of commodities, including sugar, cocoa and coffee, are being hit by forces that have sent up prices worldwide. Oranges are one of the most popular fruits in America and join the list of everyday prices frustrating consumers and clouding their perceptions of the economy. 

Meanwhile, bananas. The price of bananas is increasing as climate change is pushing temperatures above the optimal range for banana growth. The Cavendish banana, or as you probably know it, "the banana," is in danger of extinction due to a fungus called Panama disease Tropical Race 4 (TR4). First detected in 1990 in Taiwan, it has spread to more than 20 banana-producing countries – including those in Central and South America. TR-4 attacks banana trees at the roots, killing the fruit. Fungicides and other chemicals can't kill it, so farmers have few options when it invades their crop. Once farmland has been hit with TR4, it can cause complete yield loss. 

There are more than 1,000 varieties of bananas, but the Cavendish is far and away the most common. It's probable that every banana you've ever seen and eaten was a Cavendish. But forecasts predict the extinction of the Cavendish within 10 years as TR-4 spreads.

Seventh Ocean

You may think of today as June 8, but in the Universal Solar Calendar it is Seventh Ocean.  

Initially, the Ocean days followed Twelfth days in the Calendar. The 12th day of the year was First Twelve followed by First Ocean, and 24th day was Second Twelve followed by Second Ocean, and so on. But for some reason, the 36th day of the year is called The Ancient Village, followed by Third Ocean, and thereafter the Ocean days seems to come more or less at random.  Today, as I said, is Seventh Ocean. 

The name Seventh Ocean is auspicious, recalling as it does the Seventh and Final Voyage of Sinbad. The Voyages of Sinbad are a cycle themselves embedded in the larger cycle of the 1,001 Arabian Nights. 

Read the late John Barth's The Tidewater Tales for a dizzying analysis of the numerology in the  Scheherazade stories.   His premise is that 1,001 is a very deliberate number, not just "a big number and then one more." That number, Barth asserts, is the number of menstrual cycles a woman has in her lifetime. In his version, Scheherazade tells the Sultan one of the Arabian Nights stories each time she's  having her period and is deemed "unclean" for sex by Islamic standards, and thus delays her execution. The Sultan apparently had the attitude, "if you can't fuck 'em, kill 'em," but was so entertained by her stories on her "off" nights that he spared her until she was "clean" again. 

The math holds up. 1,001 periods divided by 12 periods a year is 83 years, and while a woman isn't ovulating 83 years of her life, Barth points out that each month, Scheherazade may have been "out of commission" for two nights, so 1,001 stories would have gotten her through 500½ periods. In addition, she bore the Sultan five children, and for each of those children missed nine periods. 500 less (nine tines five) 45 is 455, and 455 periods divided by 12 periods a year is a more reasonable 38 years. If she reached puberty at the age of 10, had five children, and reached menopause at 48, that's 1,001 Arabian Nights.  Or so The Tidewater Tales claim. 

Anyway, as per our custom here at WDW, each Ocean day is accompanied by one of Elaine Radigue's Occam Ocean compositions, and today is no exception. Here's Occam Ocean Hepta 1 performed by Ensemble Dedalus at the Crossroads Festival on June 12, 2018 at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg. 

Forming the Inner Ring

In the summer of 1972, I drove with my girlfriend from Sparta, New Jersey to Asbury Park to see the band Cactus perform at the Sunshine In in Asbury Park.

This was a year before Bruce Springsteen's debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, and two years before his breakthrough The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.  Asbury Park, the Stone Pony, and the Jersey Shore weren't a "thing" yet and I wasn't a particular fan of Cactus, either. I just wanted to see a live rock band and there was nothing happening in my small home town.

Cactus aren't exactly memorable, but they were a blues-based, hard-rock supergroup along the lines of Blue Cheer and the MC5 that featured members of the Vanilla Fudge, Mitch Ryder's Detroit Wheels, and Ted Nugent's Amboy Dukes, although neither Ryder nor Nugent were in the band. I think they were aiming to sound like Cream but wound up somewhere closer to Grand Funk Railroad. I haven't heard them for literally decades at this point but I'm listening to their discography on Spotify right now, and I can tell you I probably won't be doing that again any time soon.

All I remember about the set was bassist Tim Bogert was unhappy with the sound system and kicked a hole in what I thought at the time was an amp but realize now was just his monitor. But that was the end of the set - they couldn't or wouldn't play with the busted monitor and walked off stage. The girlfriend and I drove back home fairly disappointed. 

I hadn't yet turned 18, but this wasn't my first rock concert. I'd already seen the bands Mountain and Blood, Sweat & Tears at SUNY Stony Brook. I had managed to get my hands on a fake ID and got into Max's Kansas City in New York to see some band or another that unfortunately wasn't the Velvet Underground. But this was still an early, formative experience and I had been fairly excited before I was ultimately disappointed.

What many rock stars fail to realize is that what to them is just another gig in some shitty club during a seemingly endless tour is a major event to their fans. I bought tickets to the show weeks in advance (mail order in those pre-internet days), worked hard to convince the girlfriend's parents to let me take their daughter on an out-of-town road trip, bought a tankful of gasoline during the 1970s energy crisis, and drove an hour to the gig. All for Bogert to pitch a hissy fit on stage and end the show early.

I'm not a Taylor Swift fan but I have nothing against her either. But one thing I like about her is that from everything I've seen and heard, she understands the asymmetrical relationship between performer and audience. She gets it and genuinely seems to care about her fans and their experience at her shows. Can't say the same for Tim Bogert.

Old men have a million stories and no one to listen to them, including memories of rock 'n' roll shows from 52 years ago. Thanks for putting up with my reminiscence - I saw a segment on Morning Joe today about The Stone Pony and it brought back these memories and I didn't know what else to do with them.

Stages of the True Field

 

Israel has killed more than 36,500 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and thousands more remain buried under the rubble and are presumed dead. Around 26 million tons of debris and rubble have been left in the wake of Israel’s bombardment, which could take years to clean up.

Now it's been estimated that the climate cost of reconstructing the 200,000 apartment buildings, schools, universities, hospitals, mosques, bakeries, and water and sewage plants that Israel ruined in Gaza will generate as much as 60 million tons of CO₂. This is equivalent to the total emissions generated in 2022 by entire countries such as Portugal and Sweden. Among his crimes against humanity, we can now add "contributed to climate change" to Bibi Netanyahu's list of offenses.

Meanwhile, tornadoes yesterday hit Maryland and Detroit, where a two-year-old boy was killed and his mother critically injured after a tornado dropped a massive tree on the bed where the child and his mother were sleeping. The mother is in the hospital in critical condition and a two-month-old who was also in the home is expected to recover.

Already this year, excessive-heat warnings have been issued from Texas, across Arizona and Nevada, up through the center of California, and to the northern part of the state, as more than 36 million people across the country brace for days of potentially life-threatening temperatures. Affected areas of California could see conditions 30° F higher than normal for this time of year, as southwestern cities, including Phoenix and Las Vegas, prepare to hit peaks above 110°.

This could be just the start of another record-breaking year with the potential to pass 2023 as the hottest year in recorded history. A three-month forecast of seasonal temperatures by NOAA predicts above-average temperatures for most of the country this summer. These early seasonal extremes are already straining the system, and vulnerable communities bear the brunt of rising temperatures as the human-caused climate crisis pushes already-sweltering locales past the brink.

Day of the Chicago Rose

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Tanzania, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom do not allow visas for convicted felons. Donald Trump is not allowed to enter these countries. 

Part of the responsibilities of a President is to be the United States' ambassador-in-chief, and to represent the U.S. at international meetings and conferences. Donald Trump's 34 felony convictions prevent him from doing the job of President. 

He would still be allowed in Russia and Saudi Arabia, so he is qualified to be a fugitive.

Day of Hell Gate

For some reason, sports-talk radio host Colin Cowherd occasionally veers into non-sports conversations. That's okay by me - I'm not one of those "shut up and dribble" folks who think people can have opinions on only one topic - but I generally disagree with Cowherd's views. In 2022, he predicted a “red wave” in the midterm elections and he once accused Democrats of maliciously keeping children out of school during the pandemic. I disagree wit h him, but the civil libertarian in me defends his right to say it.

Interestingly, the other day, on the subject of Trump's 43 felony convictions, he told listeners, “If everybody in your circle is a felon, maybe it’s not rigged. Maybe the world isn’t against you.” 

“Donald Trump is now a felon,” Cowherd said. “His campaign chairman (Paul Manafort) was a felon. So is his deputy campaign manager (Rick Gates), his personal lawyer (Michael Cohen), his chief strategist (Steve Bannon), his National Security Adviser (Michael Flynn), his Trade Advisor (Peter Navarro), his Foreign Policy Adviser (George Papadopoulos), his campaign fixer (Cohen, again), and his company CFO (Allen Weisselberg). They’re all felons. Judged by the company you keep. It’s a cabal of convicts.”

“Stop trying to sell me on ‘everything’s rigged, the country’s falling into the sea, the economy’s terrible,’” he continued. “The America that I live in is imperfect. But compared to the rest of the world, I think we’re doing okay.” Cowherd argued that the picture of “skyrocketing” crime rates Trump often evokes on the campaign trail is nonexistent and that violent crimes rates have “plummeted coast to coast” since 2023. “I live in a nice neighborhood in L.A. and it’s not … one of those swanky neighborhoods, but I don’t see crime. I’m not stumbling over homeless people.” 

“Dodger Stadium’s full, leads Major League Baseball in attendance,” he continued. “Laker games are full. People have money in their pocket.”

Cowherd concluded that Trump is "trying to sell me an America that doesn’t exist."

Ladder of the West

 

I took my walk along the river again today, as opposed to the Beltline trail. Third time in the past week. 5.2 miles, 3.1 mph, 12,326 steps, 29.9 inches per step. Ah, so nice to have so much data.  Both feet were on the ground, double support, 28% of the time. 437 calories burned. There is such a thing as too much data.

Between the exercise and my low-sugar, prediabetic diet, my weight's come down. This morning, I was 203.5 pounds, closing in on my interim goal of 200 pounds. My target is 180 pounds, This is the least I've weighed in a while. I haven't owned a bathroom scale until recently, but I recall weighing over 200 during a doctor's exam and prior to recently, I hadn't been to a doctor since 2011. 

Instead of paying $5 to park at the National Recreation Area, I bought a $40 annual parking pass today. Makes sense financially, and having an annual pass may provide additional motivation to keep on going if my enthusiasm ever wanes. 

Right now, my goal is five miles every other day. I can relax, shop, do housework, whatever on the intervening days. 

Day of the Outer Range

 

Another tree fell in the neighborhood, knocking out power for about an hour. There was no storm, no wind to speak of, no rain. The tree just apparently decided it was time to fall over, and took down some power lines on its way. Or as we say in Contemplative Stoicism, the tree manifested its potential to become fallen timber.

With nothing else to do in my darkened home, I went outside to take a first-hand look at the situation. The power company was already on the scene with a cherry-picker truck to replace the lines. Ol' Charlie, a neighbor and probably the oldest remaining resident of the 'hood, was outside too, surveying the damage.

"Can you believe they're gonna put Trump in jail?," was the first thing he asked me.

I don't think Trump is facing imminent incarceration, despite his guilty verdict on 34 felonies. First, these are all white-collar, generally victimless crimes. It can be argued that the voters and American democracy were the victims, but no one was physically or financially harmed by the crimes. Also, jail time is often waived for elderly defendants, and Trump is 77 years old. 

On the other hand, Michael Cohen did time for the same crimes. Trump shows no remorse for his actions, was contemptuous of the judge, the jury, the witnesses, and the entire legal process. All of these are among the reasons for which probation is usually denied.

I'm glad I'm not Judge Juan Marchand. It's a tough decision to make, and he's bound to be criticized and second-guessed for whatever he chooses. 

"I don't think he's going to jail," I told ol' Charlie, "but I'm glad to see he's finally held accountable to the same standard of justice as everyone else." 

Shocked, ol' Charlie asked "How's that justice?" I think that he thought I was a fellow MAGA, probably due to my age and the fact that I've always been friendly to ol' Charlie in our previous sidewalk encounters.

"Trump's doing everything he can to save the American economy," ol' Charlie claimed. "And now, they put him in jail, the whole country is going to go to hell." He went on, apropos of  nothing, to make a remark about Vice President Kamala Harris I'm not going to repeat here.  

Reflexively, I started to ask, "What has Trump ever done to save the economy . . ." and then caught myself. Fact-based, logical argument gets one nowhere in these matters. Ol' Charlie's in the MAGA camp, and I'm Antifa, if anything. But after years of living in Georgia and having to get along with coworkers and clients of all political orientations, I've learned how to talk with these people, and usually I can find some point of common agreement. 

So instead of arguing, I put my hand on ol' Charlie's shoulder. "My friend," I said, "I'm not a Trump person. In fact, I hate the man. But I don't think he's going to go to jail." I didn't explain my reasons why. 

"But if it were up to me, well, remember that picture from Vietnam of the general shooting the suspected spy point-blank in the head?  That's what I would like to see. Put Trump in handcuffs, march him in front of the t.v. cameras, put a gun to his temple, and bang! Case closed." 

So much for trying to find common cause. For the record, I don't believe in extrajudicial, summary executions, even in Trump's case. I was just trying to shock ol' Charlie. And it worked. He sputtered a little bit, but before he could get out another racist, hateful Fox News talking point, a third neighbor came walking up to look at the tree damage. We both, ol' Charlie and I, immediately shifted our attention and conversation to explaining to that third neighbor what had happened and the power company's estimated time for power to be restored.

I walked off with the third neighbor as ol' Charlie retreated back into his house. I don't think we're friends anymore, but no loss there. 

By the time I got to my driveway, a fourth neighbor, a die-hard, woke progressive like me, came jogging by.  We had a long talk about all manner of things, and I told him about my encounter with 'ol Charlie. The jogger agreed  that 'ol Charlie's just a relic of Georgia's past, hopelessly confused and out-of-touch with these modern times, and fed a constant stream of disinformation by Fox News and Russian propaganda to keep him in the dark. Poor Charlie.

By the time I got back in my house, the power was back on.  

Fifth Day of the Icon

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.      - John 1:1 

The English word universe, meaning the whole world, the cosmos, the totality of all existing things, was likely coined in the 1580s from the Old French univers, which in turn derives from the Latin unum (one) and versus (converted, transformed, translated, changed). It may not be a stretch to say a literal translation of universe is "the one transformed."

If we consider for a moment what existed before creation of the universe, we are asking in the literal sense what it was that had been transformed. What has existed, has always existed, and will always exist, from before the existence of the universe through and beyond the end of all other existence?

One could argue that the answer is mathematics. One plus one equals two in China, in the United States, on the moon, on Mars, in orbit around Alpha Centauri, inside of a black hole, even in the deepest recesses of the space-time continuum where light from the Big Bang hasn't yet reached. One plus one will always equal two, even when there isn't one of anything in existence. And if one plus one always equals two, then two plus two always equals four, four squared will always be 16, and all other forms of mathematics, including trig, geometry, calculus, logic, imaginary numbers, fractals, Fibonacci sequences, and so on and so forth to the most abstract forms of higher mathematical thought also always existed.

Mathematics was the Word that existed in the beginning, and by St. John's logic, then, mathematics is God, but I don't think he meant it that way and certainly modern Christians don't interpret it that way. 

One and one will always be two, even if there isn't "one" of anything, because a potential one plus another potential one will always be a potential two. So side-by-side with mathematics, potential also always existed. Before the universe was created, whether by Big Bang or by the Word of God, there was always potential. The potential for a Big Bang explosion, or for the utterance of the Word. 

Potential can be expressed mathematically in many ways, such as the formula for potential energy, U = -∫Fdx.  That may seem like a leap of logic, but if 1 + 1 = 2, it can be demonstrated through many more steps than is necessary to go into here that therefore U = -∫Fdx. My point is that potential is a mathematical as well as a logical expression, so there is no contradiction in it's existence before creation. 

A general working definition of potential is some quantity which, when differentiated in a certain way, yields some other quantity. Therefore, potential is a force of change, of transformation. This leads us back to the original, literal definition of universe as the one (uni-) converted, transformed, changed (-versus).  The universe is potential realized, the emergent form of the original potential. The universe, including the stars and planets, the Earth and its mountains and rivers, and all living beings, including me and you, are all emergent expressions of potential.

Consider, for a minute, Animal Crackers. Some are shaped like tigers, some are shaped like camels, some are shaped like bears. But fundamentally, they're all cookie dough. The dough is expressed in different ways, but it's all fundamentally just cookie dough. Cookie dough is the potential of the Animal Cracker universe. In this universe, all things, tigers, camels, and bears, mountains and rivers, you and I, are all potential. Potential is the cookie dough of this universe. 

Zen Buddhists call this busshō, or Buddha-nature, the concrete substrate of all things, both sentient and not.  Some call it busshō, some call it Buddha-nature, Barnum's calls it cookie dough. I call it potential.  

Sun Ra once explained creation as "At first there was nothing, and then nothing turned itself inside out and became something" (Discipline 27-ii). I'd be the last to contradict him, but I'm modifying his expression to "At first there was potential, and then potential manifested itself as the universe."

In the beginning there was potential, and potential is all there is, ever was, and ever shall be, without end, Amen.