Good Grief! We Moved into a Flood Zone!

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What were we thinking? A flood zone? 

Thank goodness we are renters; we can move out if need be. That said, why did no one tell us when we moved? Only when we got a notice from the city of Olympia six months in, did we learn about this risk. But we’re chill. Our risk is limited to freakish weather events in which heavy rain coincides with King Tides, and our residence will not be impacted – just our ability to walk or drive along our waterfront haunts. 

We are not in what would normally be considered a flood zone. We are not on the bank of a river that floods periodically. Rather, we are on the edge of a salt water bay with a near 20 ft tide (that’s max, not every day), and the terrain is flat. Extreme low pressure allows the tide to rise higher than it normally would. If it’s also raining heavily, as is the norm during such spells of low pressure, the salt water just ignores the high tide line and keeps coming, right into downtown. This last happened in 2022 when several waterfront businesses were impacted. 

The water got high enough to keep people indoors, but no so high that an ambulance couldn’t get to the door of our apartment building, so chill is the appropriate mood. Plus, tides move out as well as in, so this is totally different from massive river floods or hurricanes. I’ve known of this risk in other shoreline neighborhoods around Puget Sound, but never gave it a thought here. Silly me. But I’m guessing that I would have opted to live with the risk since I love living where we do. 

People are just not rational about all things at all times. Hmm. How have we survived so long?

Live Sports are a Great Diversion

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Historically, I’ve been a fair weather sports fan. I’ve only watched “my” teams, and then I’ve only watched when they’re winning. This fall, however, I’ve discovered the value of watching live games that aren’t even my teams. Even a loss, if well-fought, can be better than paying attention to the news. 

A bunch of reasons support my recent inclination to watch live games. One, it’s real. Let’s just gloss over the recent news of NBA players possibly cheating. Most games involve actual athletes competing to win. If a game is going badly, they can still compete for a good play. Football and baseball both allow time for high fives and lots of happy jumping around after an especially good play. I swear, it’s contagious. In addition to celebrating good plays, we also get to see some good sportsmanship. Most often, players accept the ruling of umpires and referees. If they don’t, teammates generally intervene to calm things down. This is all proof of games being “real.” 

The alternative to live sports is political posturing. Yes, this is also a game, but it’s a disgusting game. There’s no such thing as good sportsmanship in politics anymore. Colleagues do not intervene when someone goes off the rails. Mudslinging is the name of the game, and with the current trend of challenging election results, insulting judges, slamming through guardrails, and simply making stuff up, the sense of fair play that is evident in live sports is gone completely.

There aren’t even any great personal stories of people who overcame a variety of obstacles to accomplish something good in politics. “Aargh!” you say, of course there are. Just think of JD Vance, or Joe Biden, or… well I won’t go on. Of course there are regular people who’ve become accomplished politicians, passing laws that have benefitted regular people back home. You’re right, there are some. But, seriously, most of them have been corrupted somewhere along the way. Sorry, but I’m with Yesavage, that rookie pitcher for the Blue Jays who pitched an amazing game yesterday. Will he get corrupted somewhere along his way? I don’t know, but for now, he’s gold!

I’ve always objected to the amount of money that goes into professional sports. Money for ballparks, money for players and coaches, the price of tickets, the price of food at the ballpark, the price of parking for a game, the “fan gear,” it all adds up a pile of money that could surely be spent of more important things. And yet, here I am watching. This year, it’s keeping me sane, so thanks to everyone who’s paying for all that. 

College sports are pricey, too. But many of the players are kids who earned good scholarships by developing their athletic talents. I’ve known people who would not have gone to college otherwise, but have obtained graduate degrees and are thriving due to a scholarship for track and field or some other sport. Good for them. Let’s have more of that.

One thing I’ve always hated about live television is the need to live my life around its schedule. I loved it when we could tape shows on VHF, and I love the ability to stream shows whenever I want to watch them. Yet here I am, watching the clock so I can turn on the TV at the right time to watch a game. So retro! And yet, I’m doing it. I must really be in a funk to suddenly, at this point in my life, find myself tuning in to live sports. 

Once in a while, we are able to watch something with friends. Example: a college girls’ volleyball game. Yes, it was intense, and great fun! Another example: local baseball playoffs in a small theater in our apartment building. Great to cheer with some neighbors! A third example: texting silly comments during a game with a friend across the ocean! I like this kind of “in the moment” sharing that just doesn’t happen with politics.

Politics will never be like live sports, but wouldn’t it be great if we could get past the mudslinging, distortions, and outright lies that dominate the political airwaves lately? 

Sadness, Confusion, Possibilities

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Too many stories, not enough time.

Sadness

Sadness is the only word I can come up with on this second anniversary of the pogrom that shocked us all on October 7, 2023. Horror is the only word that conveys my feelings about the celebration of that massacre that erupted that same day. Please, may the people who have been calling for a ceasefire recognize that Israel has accepted Trump’s proposal; Hamas has not. Hamas needs to release the remaining hostages and relinquish power.

Confusion

Congratulations to trans activists who have conflated gay conversion therapy with exploratory therapy that is not sanctioned as “gender affirming therapy.” These are not equivalent, but now the Supreme Court is being pulled into this quagmire. The result is likely to be the resurrection of gay conversion therapy – despite its proven harms – with exploratory therapy, which is what confused young people need in this era of trans madness. Perhaps states should stop trying to legislate solutions to LGB and TQ matters? I don’t know. I feel for gay people who have been harmed and confused young people who are being harmed. Sure, guarantee rights to housing, jobs, education. Then let medical professionals get their heads straight about treatments that are based on actual evidence rather than ideologies.

Possibilities

In the war between cancel culture and billionaires, the latest battle has the billionaires coming out on top, again. Remember when Musk bought Twitter and reinstated accounts that Jack Dorsey had cancelled? That was a good day for free speech. (No, I don’t love everything that Musk has done, but undoing censorship was a good deed.) The thread now is David Ellison… Skydance Media… CBS… The Free Press (aka Bari Weiss)… free speech?

I know that most of my friends paid little attention when Bari Weiss left her position as an opinion columnist at The New York Times in the summer of 2020. Wasting little time, Weiss began publishing “Common Sense” on the Substack platform in January of 2021. Common Sense rebranded as The Free Press in 2022. It now boasts 1.5 million paid subscribers who want a source of information that is neither far right not far left.

I’ve read/watched/listened to The Free Press since its Common Sense days. It has published voices that were shunned by the MSM (mainstream media), voices that I appreciated. Yes, there’s a pro-Israel bias (that mirrors my own), but otherwise, it offers viewpoints that I don’t find elsewhere. Actually, I don’t find pro-Israel voices elsewhere much either. Why is that?

Well, good news for the curious: The Free Press has dropped its paywall this week. Go to thefp.com. Spend some time there and see what you think. Then tune in to CBS News once Bari has had an opportunity to bring in some balanced coverage. Let’s pound cancel culture into dust!

The Skagit River is not Moving to LA!

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To all of my Skagit friends: I have it on good authority that Skagit River water will stay in Skagit county. . 

To everyone else: This may sound bizarre, but ten or more years ago, one of the rumors circulating around Skagit county was that Angelinos were plotting to take the water of the Skagit River to feed the swimming pools of southern California. At that time, the county had put restrictions on new wells in rural parts of the county, tribes were pressuring the state and the county to deal with pollution and culverts that were hindering salmon recovery efforts, and the topic of water was seeping into every conversation.

Then we moved, and I didn’t hear much more about the efforts to take water south to LA. Until today. It’s remarkable how a topic can sit untouched in my brain for a decade or more, then come roaring back to the surface in a second, but that’s just what happened. I was listening to a deluge of information about tribal business ventures, all of which was new to me. And then the speaker began discussing his talks with people about new-fangled tunnel boring machinery. One potential use for this better, cheaper machinery might be to move water long distances from where it is abundant to where it is scarce, such as from the rainy northwest to ever-thirsty southern California. My ears might have doubled in size in that exact moment. Say what?

I raised my hand and asked what the tribes along the Skagit River watershed would think of this idea given their ongoing concerns about water for salmon. The speaker calmly answered that they were not yet enthused, but that Skagit county also had agricultural areas that might get by on less water. Say what? Were people actually talking about taking water from Skagit delta agriculture for this project. Well, maybe not. 

After the program, I got a moment to double check what I’d heard, and the speaker said he didn’t think anyone in Skagit country, either tribes or ag folks had any interest in this project. He added that there are estuaries around the Salish Sea where the mix of fresh water and salt water is changing, and people are looking at ways to reduce the amount of fresh water in some areas. Well, maybe, I thought. Not my wheelhouse. 

So, having calmed down with reassurances that the Skagit watershed will not be feeding swimming pools in LA, I then could take in the potential, not just for transporting water long distances, but perhaps also putting many, many small turbines in these very long tunnels to generate power as the flowing water makes its way from source to destination. That’s intriguing. And, as it turns out, today’s speaker was not fixated on Pacific Northwest water going to California; rather he was thinking about water from parts of northern Canada, where fresh water is a problem, going to the ag areas and population centers in southern Canada or even the US (someday when the US and Canada are friends again). 

This tunneling scheme was just one of many climate friendly projects that tribes are researching as they seek to invest in projects that will benefit their communities and the rest of the world as well. And not all of their business ventures are focused on climate challenges. Many are simply trying to find businesses beyond casinos that could employ tribal members on reservations but also in urban areas. 

Lots of good news was presented, and I welcome that for sure. But I found it a bit ironic that tribes might be the biggest cheerleaders for capitalism today. How rich is that? 

Get Me Out of the Doldrums!

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Waiting, waiting, waiting. Activity occurs, but nothing is resolved. I have this wretched feeling of impending doom, but doom is never finalized. I could be a sailboat near the equator waiting for a wind strong enough to get me out of the doldrums in one direction or the other. Please, can we just move somewhere, anywhere, let’s get this settled. Either the US is finished or we can salvage our Constitution and use it to make some needed changes. 

Our Constitution has been amended and, theoretically, could be amended again. Some simple tweaks are being proposed, and I’m of the opinion that only very simple tweaks could possibly survive the ratification process. One tweak that I support has been proposed by David French. He’s a conservative NYT columnist. He’s also a graduate of Harvard Law and host with Sarah Isgur of the popular “Advisory Opinion” legal podcast sponsored by The Dispatch, a libertarian media organization. Despite my reservations about the NYT, I often learn things by reading and listening to French. 

Please read French’s column here (NYT) or this Daily KOS article here explaining his reasoning for this proposal. Essentially he wants to reinforce the original expectation that Congress should be the pre-eminent brach of government. He suggests replacing the first sentence of Article II in order to accomplish this. “Instead of declaring, ‘The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America,’ it should read, ‘A president of the United States of America shall execute laws passed by Congress.’” There. That’s it. 

No more would a president be able to declare that he “can do anything he wants.” Yes, it’s hard to imagine that any tweak of the Constitution could address the myriad issues of our day, but I have to agree with French that clarifying the supremacy of Congress over the Executive Branch would be a welcome attempt to rebalance things. “No Kings!” No, I don’t love the current Congress, but perhaps if there was more clarity about the importance of their role in the great scheme of things, a few of them might get a spine. 

I think such an amendment could shake things up enough to generate some activity in Congress which is moribund currently. And despite the many attempts to secure a permanent majority, it might some day be possible to elect people willing to think and act – as opposed to just grandstanding – once they get to DC. In any event we wouldn’t have a king. 

Your thoughts?