PufPuf23
PufPuf23's JournalLady Bird Johnson Grove in Redwood National Park
Here is a link from NPS describing the very accessible hike. Lots of spectacular pictures at the link. Several condors have been released nearby recently.
https://www.redwoodhikes.com/RNP/LBJ.html
Saw Buddy Guy in on a high school field trip to Fillmore West
BB King was the headliner. Buddy Guy's hot song at the time was Fever (and why I had signed on for the "cultural" outing) The opening act was the Allman Brothers on their first national tour.
My current favorite contemporary musician is Samantha Fish. Fish will open on several of Buddy Guy's farewell concerts and likely play with Buddy.
Less we forget about the NRA and Russian spy and source of funds Marina Butina...
Perhaps Americans (and the GOP and NRA members) should be reminded and often.
The NRA Can’t Erase Its Ties to a Russian Agent Who Targeted Ukraine
Leaders of the gun group long embraced a Kremlin operative who openly backed Putin’s military conquest.
Mark Follman, National Affairs Editor, MotherJones
Four days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the political arm of the National Rifle Association published an article praising a “valiant” Ukranian army and resistance from “ordinary Ukrainians taking up arms to defend their country and communities.” Since early February, the gun lobbying group had used the coming war as an opportunity to talk up gun rights. “What is happening in Ukraine proves the wisdom of our founding fathers in drafting the Second Amendment,” the NRA now reiterated as the bloodshed grew, a right essential to “preserving human dignity, self-destiny and freedom.”
Forgotten in the face of Vladimir Putin’s barbaric attack, it seems, were the cozy ties between top NRA officials and convicted Russian agent Maria Butina. The Kremlin operative didn’t just commit conspiracy against the United States—she also worked on behalf of Putin’s military conquest in the Ukraine region during the same period she was forging alliances, both in the US and in Moscow, with NRA leaders.
Butina is best known for infiltrating the Republican Party and seeking to influence the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. She cultivated relationships among the conservative movement alongside her boss, Alexander Torshin, a high-level official from Putin’s party who donated to the NRA as a “life member” and later was sanctioned by the US government. After Butina’s downfall, the NRA sought to distance itself and claimed it had no knowledge of Butina’s foreign activities. But as I and my colleague Hannah Levintova reported in a 2019 investigation, while Butina was spending time with NRA leaders David Keene, Wayne LaPierre and others, information publicly available on social media and from other sources made clear that Butina was aggressively working against US national security interests:
Mother Jones has uncovered a trail of activity showing that during the same period when top NRA leaders welcomed Butina into the fold—meeting with her extensively in Moscow and the United States—Butina actively supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military takeover of Crimea. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion and annexation in March 2014, Butina denounced retaliatory sanctions by the Obama administration and traveled to Crimea to promote the arming of pro-Russian separatists. Her efforts there included pledging support to a leader of a militia group that violently seized a Crimean news outlet it deemed “pro-American” and swiftly repurposed for a Kremlin propaganda operation.
After serving most of an 18-month federal prison sentence, Butina was deported to her native country in October 2019. Putin personally defended Butina, declaring that the US had “nothing on her” and had convicted her “in order not to look totally stupid.” By last fall, at age 33, she began serving in the Russian parliament as a member of Putin’s United Russia party.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/nra-maria-butina-ukraine-putin-war-crimea-republicans-trump-guns/
Feinstein's continued absence is impacting judicial nominees
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Sen. Dianne Feinstein has missed 58 Senate votes since getting sick in late February with the painful, but non-life-threatening shingles virus.
Her extended absence, along with that of another Democratic senator, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has made it more difficult for the Senate to confirm President Biden’s nominees and pass legislation. The Senate has a 51-49 party split favoring Democrats, but the absence of multiple senators changes how many votes are needed for a measure to succeed. Vice President Kamala Harris has cast three tie-breaking votes this year in her role as president of the Senate.
Feinstein was hospitalized in early March for treatment and returned to her San Francisco home on March 7. She has not been in Washington, D.C. since the onset of the illness. She has missed 60 votes of the 82 taken in 2023 so far, including two prior to her illness.
Feinstein “continues to work from home in San Francisco as she recuperates,” her spokesperson Adam Russell told The Chronicle Monday. He did not share any information to share about when she plans to return to D.C.
more at link
Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/feinstein-judicial-nominess-17889123.php
DeSantis also a baseball player, thought this ad with wife
and child was a spoof at first.
>He was a member of the Little League team from Dunedin National that made it to the 1991 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.<
>He was an outfielder on the Yale baseball team; as a senior in 2001, he had the team's best batting average at .336<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_DeSantis
Also a conservative Catholic attorney.
RELEASED CONDOR, POY-WE-SON, RETURNS HOME
Been watching for the condors as live about 15 miles from release site.
Cool video and pictures at link.
RELEASED CONDOR, POY-WE-SON, RETURNS HOME
Lisa Music, 2/20/23 RedHeadedBlackBelt
Local wildlife photographer, Ann Constantino, filmed a soothing video of a 2-year-old condor released back into the wild two weeks ago.
Ann wrote on her Facebook page, “This bird, Poy-we-son (‘the one who goes ahead’ in Yurok language) was the one who explored for two weeks on his own …after release.”
The young condor returned home to his release site where Ann was able to capture him on film and video. (The following photos are slightly blurry due to the vast distance from which the shots were taken and haze.)
https://kymkemp.com/2023/02/20/released-condor-poy-we-son-returns-home/
In WWII, my mother watched for Japanese balloon bombs on Onion Mountain
above the Klamath River (and is the Onion Mountain mentioned in regard to the Patterson alleged bigfoot film in Bluff Creek). My father was in Europe.
When Six Americans Were Killed By a ‘Balloon Bomb’
A balloon used for warfare by the Japanese resulted in the only Americans to die on U.S. soil from enemy action in during World War II.
May 5, 2022, marks the 77th anniversary of the deaths of six Americans, the only Americans to die on U.S. soil from enemy action in World War II. They were killed by a Japanese Fu-Go, also known as a balloon bomb.
Fear, Panic and Forest Fires
In 1944, the Japanese military tried to instill panic in the U.S. by launching thousands of bombs carried across the Pacific by means of hydrogen-filled balloons. The bombs were designed primarily as incendiary devices. The target was the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Because they were made of paper, it was believed the balloon bombs would explode and burn, leaving no trace. According to Japanese documentation, it was thought the fires would pull resources away from the military and the stealthy nature of the balloon bombs would unnerve and terrify the populace.
https://www.flyingmag.com/when-six-americans-were-killed-by-a-balloon-bomb/
Nobuo Fujita
Nobuo Fujita (藤田 信雄, Fujita Nobuo) (1911 – 30 September 1997) was a Japanese naval aviator and warrant flying officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy who flew a floatplane from the long-range submarine aircraft carrier I-25 and conducted the Lookout Air Raids in southern Oregon on September 9, 1942, making him the only Axis pilot during World War II to aerial bomb the contiguous United States.[1][2][3] Using incendiary bombs, his mission was to start massive forest fires in the Pacific Northwest near the city of Brookings, Oregon with the objective of drawing the U.S. military's resources away from the Pacific Theater. The strategy was also later used in the Japanese fire balloon campaign.
cut
Later life
Fujita continued as an Imperial Japanese Navy pilot, mainly in reconnaissance duties, until 1944, when he was transferred to the training of kamikaze pilots. After the war he opened a hardware store in Ibaraki Prefecture, and later worked at a company making wire.[4]
Fujita was invited to Brookings in 1962, after the Japanese government was assured he would not be tried as a war criminal. He gave the City of Brookings his family's 400-year-old katana in friendship. Ashamed of his actions during the war, Fujita had intended to use the sword to commit seppuku if he were given a hostile reception.[4] However, the town treated him with respect and affection, although his visit still raised some controversy.[8]
Impressed by his welcome in the United States, during his visit, he promised to invite Brookings students to Japan. Despite the bankruptcy of his company, Fujita made good on his promise by co-sponsoring the visit of three female students from Brookings-Harbor High School to Japan in 1985.[9][10] During the visit, Fujita received a dedicatory letter from an aide of President Ronald Reagan "with admiration for your kindness and generosity."
Fujita returned to Brookings in 1990, 1992, and 1995. In 1992, he planted a tree at the bomb site as a gesture of peace.[11] In 1995, he moved the samurai sword from the Brookings City Hall into the new library's display case. Fujita helped to gather money to build the library.[12]
He was made an honorary citizen of Brookings several days before his death at a hospital in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, on September 30, 1997, at the age of 85.[13] In October 1998, his daughter, Yoriko Asakura, buried some of Fujita's ashes at the bomb site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita
Excuse me for going over the 4 paragraph limit but this is such a good tale, but it is wiki and made this dying old man cry.
California's snowpack jumps to twice the average. But will it fill drought-depleted reservoirs?
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
The snowpack in California’s mountains weighed in Wednesday as the biggest it’s been at the start of February anytime this century, a product of the recent storms that have flipped the script on drought and begun easing water shortages across the state.
State water officials conducting their monthly snow survey logged snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades at 205% of the average for the date. At Phillips Station, one of the state’s oldest and most central monitoring sites where surveyors convened in front of TV cameras for measurements Wednesday morning, the snowpack was 193% of average.
The numbers are welcome relief for California after its driest three-year period on record. Melted snow supplies nearly a third of the state’s drinking and irrigation water, and it usually comes at a critical time — when the rains are over and summer water demand kicks in.
But the amount of the newfound snow that makes it to California’s taps, as it begins to thaw and wash down mountainsides into reservoirs, hinges on several yet-to-be-determined variables, including how much more snow falls, how early it melts and how much soaks into the ground. Any of these things could undo the state’s fickle recovery from drought.
Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/california-s-snowpack-jumps-to-twice-the-17757389.php
The recent drought followed by precipitation this Winter are a respite and not a solution to California's water problems.
So behind the times, may be brewing coffee in a low impact manner.
Black coffee addict, aged 70.
December 1973 moved to Berkeley to go to Cal, turned 21 in January 74.
Several blocks away, there was a coffee shop on a corner and people would line up on the sidewalk to have cups filled or take coffee in paper cup. This was the Peets store on Cedar and Walnut; Peets was still owned and operated by Mr. Peet and there was the Berkeley store and another Peets in Menlo Park.
Got into dark roasts like Moca Java, Major Dickenson's Blend, etc. Bought a gold filter and a French press. Before graduating, had amassed a second identical gold filter and two identical French presses. Also bought two plastic cheesy grocery store Melitta cones that had an outlet that fit into the Stanley thermos I used for work. Was so picky about coffee, one set was my travel set and all needed was way to boil water.
Now nearly 50 years later I use the same two gold filters and French presses. The gold filters are held together by duct tape and crazy glue, only use French press when company and, even then, most often drip into a small crockery pitcher bought in Berkeley in the 1970s rather than use a press. Ninety-five percent of the coffee I drink (2 to 4 cups daily) are gold filter into a white crockery mug. Also have two but maybe 15 years old. One has a shadow of a woman and "Read Like a Dickinson" and the other is Oscar Wilde and would to go look to see the verbiage.
Still buy Peets but at Safeway or Costco. Buy ground as too lazy to grind beans. Sometimes accidently buy beans and need to grind. Ooops.
White House declares 'major disaster' in California; hazardous roads plague Sierra, Bay Area
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
President Biden approved California’s request for a major disaster declaration to increase federal emergency support as storms and flooding continued to flog communities across the state over the weekend. Hazardous roadways plagued several areas Sunday, with home-bound Sierra travelers warned of near-impossible conditions on some roadways and Bay Area motorists dealing with closures forced by floods and landslides.
“California is grateful for President Biden’s swift approval of this critical support to communities reeling from these ongoing storms,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said after meeting with evacuated residents in Merced County on Saturday. The declaration will unlock more federal funding to help local and state storm response efforts and will make funding available to affected individuals in hard-hit Merced, Sacramento and Santa Cruz counties.
In the Bay Area, residents on Sunday assessed damage from the widespread flooding, wind and landslides that submerged roadways and felled trees — leaving at least one dead, a woman found beneath a tree branch in Golden Gate Park, according to officials. A National Weather Service flood advisory was in effect until 9 a.m. Monday for Bay Area shoreline and North Bay interior areas.
The storms showed signs of tapering off in the Bay Area, but not before another round of moderate rain showers was expected to blow through already waterlogged areas Monday. More than 2,000 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers around the region were without power Sunday afternoon, according to the company. Most of the outages were in San Francisco, the Peninsula and the South Bay.
Read more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Traveling-back-from-Tahoe-This-is-the-best-time-17719733.php
I hope the north coast are included. I'm in extreme northeast Humboldt. Highway 96 (Klamath River Highway otherwise known as the Bigfoot Scenic Byway) is closed indefinitely upriver with no detour. Did not have phone from the 6.2 earthquake in late December. Had electric as have Kohler propane generator. Power and phones came back Thursday but power is from a generator set up locally by PG&E at the old sawmill site. I have what I need and am basically cozy and safe.
Lots of trees went down. There will be many landslides in back country because of the large wildfires in recent years. The roots of large vegetation that keep soil in place on steep slopes may die and then rot and no longer hold the soil as well. There were large fires in 2022 but there were fires in 2020 and 2021 that were larger locally than any in recorded history.
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