Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalWears Valley wildfire now 1,000 acres and 0% contained; mandatory evacuations issued
Mandatory evacuations have been issued in Wears Valley as crews work to contain a now 1,000-acre wildfire at the Hatcher Mountain Road and Indigo Lane area.
The fire remained 0% contained as of 9 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Sevier County Emergency Management Agency.
The EMA is ordering mandatory evacuations for those in the Wears Valley and Walden's Creek areas. The EMA created a dynamic map people can access and type their address into at this link, which will show if you are in the evacuation area.
As of 1 a.m. Thursday, the fire evacuation circle had been extended for the Dupont Area from South Rogers Road to the Blount County Line of Sevier County. It is unclear if this evacuation is for the same Wears Valley fire or a different one within the Wears Valley evacuation zone.
"If you are unsure if you are in this area, you should evacuate," the EMA said.
Knoxville Fire Department also sent two additional engine companies with eight firefighters to assist with the Sevier County wildfires. KFD also said they will help rotate members to allow firefighters time to rest.
https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/wildfire/wildfire-wears-valley-area/51-2e652577-8877-4d29-907f-3741f0c3955c
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Some scary echoes of the 2016 Gatlinburg fires. High winds are making the fires spread rapidly.
Another senior dumped
Last week I went back to work, finally, at the shelter (yay!) and last night I was working my new gig, which is the foster clinic, where all the "foster parents" bring their critters in for shots, medical checks, and whatnot. I had gone back in the back to get some litter for one of the foster cat parents and happened upon one of the Animal Control officers unloading a HUGE orange cat into a kennel in Intake. I asked her kiddingly, "Are you sure that's not a mountain lion?" because the cat was absolutely enormous--not fat, just BIG. She said, "No, he's just a big, sweet old boy." When I went back out front I sneaked a peek at his papers, which were lying by the computer. He's an owner surrender, 12 years old, nothing major wrong with him apparently, but there's a place on the papers for "annoying habits" and she'd written "loud meowing" and "throws up when he gets a hairball or eats too fast". Then under "reasons for surrender" she wrote "moving" and "asthma and allergies". Really, Karen? Suddenly you developed allergies? Sounded to all of us like she just got tired of him. He is a very sweet boy. When I went back to check on him before I left, he was crouched in the kennel with his face pressed against the corner. I have seen that enough to know what it means. Poor guy. I will see him again on Friday when I go in to clean, maybe tomorrow if the clinic has any appointments scheduled (none so far).
On the good news front, remember Tiger, the blind cat that hated everyone? He's been in foster care for several months and is doing well. They had to remove his eyes but he doesn't seem to be bothered. He gets along with the other cat in the house and the foster mom and visitors. AND he has a potential adopter!!!!
Monkeys Near Florida Airport Becoming Simian Celebrities
As departing jetliners roared overhead, an aging vervet monkey moped on a mangrove branch one recent afternoon in the woods he inhabits near a South Florida airport, his ego bruised.
Mikey, as he is called by his human observers, has long been the laid-back alpha male of a troop of monkeys ruling this tract of land, tucked off a busy runway at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. But this day he lost when challenged by a feisty youngster called Spike. Mikey fled screaming and was now sullenly staring at humans watching him from 15 feet (4 meters) away.
“Did you have a bad day?” asks Deborah “Missy” Williams, a Lynn University science professor who has been studying the troop and others nearby since 2014. She is also founder of the Dania Beach Vervet Project, which seeks to preserve this unique colony. “We will leave you alone so you can ponder.”
The United States has no native monkeys, but the smallish vervets have roamed Dania Beach since the late 1940s after a dozen brought from West Africa fled a now long-closed breeding facility and roadside zoo. Today, 40 descendants are broken into four troops living within 1,500 acres (600 hectares) around the airport. Florida also has a few colonies of escaped macaques and squirrel monkeys.
Florida wildlife officials often kill invasive species to protect native animals. But they tolerate the vervets, if they stay put. The monkeys are local celebrities, their travails detailed by TV and newspapers, and popular visitors with nearby workers, who feed them despite signs saying that’s illegal.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/monkeys-florida-airport-celebrities_n_62448796e4b0d8266aa6c3c8
Widow of D.C. officer who died by suicide says Jan. 6 "changed him"
The widow of an officer who died by suicide after responding to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is pressing Congress to pass legislation recognizing the trauma suffered by law enforcement officers who take their own lives, which she told CBS News would be a fitting legacy for her husband.
Four officers who responded on Jan. 6 died by suicide within seven months of the attack.
Earlier this month, Erin Smith received an email from Washington, D.C., with the result she had spent more than a year fighting for. The city had ruled that her husband's suicide — nine days after Jan. 6, 2021 — was caused by injuries sustained in battling the rioters, and as such, his death was found to have occurred in the line of duty.
"Honestly, I couldn't believe it," Smith told CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane in an exclusive interview.
She believes that the District was initially reluctant to grant the line-of-duty designation, because "with a suicide comes a stigma and something that the police department doesn't want to face or recognize."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/january-6-dc-police-jeffrey-smith-riots-suicide/
Putin feels Russian military misled him, U.S. official says
U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about the poor performance of Kremlin troops in Ukraine, the Associated Press reported and CBS News confirmed.
A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss recently declassified intelligence, said Wednesday the intelligence finding indicates that Putin is aware of the situation on information coming to him and there is now persistent tension between him and senior Russian military officials. President Biden, in an exchange with reporters, would not comment.
But the administration is hopeful that divulging the finding could help prod Putin to reconsider his options in Ukraine. The war has ground to a bloody stalemate in much of the country, with heavy casualties and Russian troop morale sinking as Ukrainian forces and volunteers put up an unexpectedly strong defense.
However, the publicity runs the risk of further isolating Putin, who U.S. officials have said seems at least in part driven by a desire to win back Russian prestige lost by the fall of the Soviet Union.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-putin-russian-military-misled-him/
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How many advisors will fall out of closed windows next week?
We All Know Teachers Are Underpaid. But Who Imagined It Was This Bad?
Just before her 16th birthday, Cara Rothrock got her first job working at a 1950s roadside restaurant and ice cream stand, only a few miles from her parents’ house in a small town in Floyd County, Indiana.
She poured soft serve. She cooked burgers and fries. She cleaned counters and took orders and ran food out to customers seated at picnic tables. All behind the glow of a bright, neon-lit parrot and a sign that read, “Polly’s Freeze.”
That was 1994. A few years later, Rothrock went off to college in Bloomington, Indiana. And because her parents—both teachers—couldn’t afford to help out much with her expenses, she held onto her job at Polly’s, commuting two hours home on weekends to pick up shifts. She spent the money as she earned it, investing in her education so that she could pursue her dream of becoming an elementary school teacher, just like her mom and dad before her.
After graduation, she landed a teaching position close to home. But with a starting salary of $29,000 and nearly that much in student loans, she didn’t feel comfortable enough financially to leave Polly’s. Not yet.
“As I tried to get a house of my own, a car, I found that, as a teacher, there was really no choice. I kind of needed to work a second job,” she explained in January from her third grade classroom at a public school near her hometown.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/03/we-all-know-teachers-are-underpaid-but-who-imagined-it-was-this-bad/
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In South Korea, teachers are called "nation builders" and given the pay and respect that titled deserves. In Finland, only the best students are selected for teacher training and a master's equivalent is required. Pay is commensurate. Here......
Lynching is now a federal hate crime after a century of blocked efforts
After multiple failed attempts across twelve decades, there is now a federal law that designates lynching as a hate crime. In a Tuesday ceremony at the White House, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law.
"Racial hate isn't an old problem. It's a persistent problem," Biden said. "Hate never goes away, it only hides under the rocks. If it gets a little bit of oxygen, it comes roaring back out, screaming. What stops it? All of us."
Under the legislation, perpetrators can receive up to 30 years in prison when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious bodily injury.
Vice President Kamala Harris said that lynching is "not a relic of the past."
"Racial acts of terror still occur in our nation. And when they do, we must all have the courage to name them and hold the perpetrators to account," she said.
The measure is named for Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was abducted, tortured and killed in 1955 after the Black teenager was accused of whistling at and grabbing Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, while visiting relatives in Mississippi. Roy Bryant, Carolyn Bryant's husband, and J.W. Milam, Roy Bryant's half brother, were tried for Emmett's murder and were quickly acquitted by an all-white jury.
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1086720579/lynching-is-now-a-federal-hate-crime-after-a-century-of-blocked-efforts
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Emmett Till and I would be the same age today........
'Who else will do this?': Inside one convoy's frantic trek to rescue refugees in Ukraine
With a sharp exclamation, the driver of the blue Mercedes minibus slams on the brakes, slowing the 21-passenger vehicle hurtling though the late-afternoon sun toward a military checkpoint sprawled across the road.
Salam Aldeen, 39, swings open the front door, yelling hello to the soldiers guarding the barricades, ignoring the machine gun poking out from beneath camouflage netting. The soldiers' fatigues look new, but their AK-47s are battered, and many are wearing sneakers, not combat boots.
"Dobryi den’" he shouts, pointing at the 21 mothers and kids inside. "Ditey."
That word, "children" in Ukrainian, is stickered on the van's hood, and Aldeen's practiced interactions with the guards puts them at ease. A young soldier boards, rifle slung across his back, his eyes roaming over the wide-eyed children and nervous mothers crammed inside. He quickly checks the passports of the handful of men aboard, ensuring they're not Ukrainians fleeing the war amid a mandate that men of fighting age remain behind.
"Do svidaniya," the soldier says to the women and children escaping Russia's deadly invasion, stepping off.
Goodbye.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/30/humanitarian-convoy-refugees-ukraine/7202089001/
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Made me cry, thinking of how my nephew, and American citizen, his Ukrainian wife, and their toddler left Ukraine in the first days of the war. War is hell. For everyone.
Will Smith, Chris Rock, and when words are violent, too
After Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars for making a cruel joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, the public spent most of its energy moralizing around Smith's physical assault. But some say Rock's language can be considered an act of violence, too.
Violence is not limited to slaps and kicks, according to experts who study violent speech and psychological harm. Violence can be the words we use to mock, categorize, exclude and control.
"I would put that joke on the continuum of linguistic violence," said William Gay, a professor at UNC Charlotte who studies the philosophy of language. "We make too light of words. ... A lesson that we can take from what happened is the need to be more reflective about what we're saying and the harms that it can cause."
The cultural conversation around violent speech tends to focus on the most egregious acts, including hate speech and slurs. It's the uproar when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she was called a "f------ b----," by Rep. Ted Yoho on a staircase at the U.S. Capitol. It's the outrage when former President Donald Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "animals." It's our indignation at the most horrific examples of online abuse, when Internet mobs are unleashed and reporters and academics and TikTok creators are inundated with rape and death threats.
But some linguists, psychologists and philosophers of language argue that in only condemning the most abusive speech acts, we excuse and dismiss the more subtle forms, including comedy. Rock may not have known how his joke would land, he may not have intended such harm and as a person of color belongs to a category that experiences rampant dehumanization through violent language, but linguists say his own speech act still deserves scrutiny.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2022/03/29/smith-slapped-chris-rock-but-some-say-joke-violent-too/7207103001/
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Let's talk about LANGUAGE that hurts people.....as a child, a woman, an LBTQIA+ person, a person of color, a disabled person.......words DO hurt
Remember that house in Richmond that ATF raided a couple of weeks ago? More details
At a community meeting Tuesday night, Henrico police revealed that the owner of 7200 West Durwood Crescent has been charged with nine counts of manufacturing or possessing an explosive device, six counts of illegal fireworks, possession with intent to distribute, setting booby traps and maintaining a fortified drug house.
A Tuckahoe neighborhood had a community meeting Wednesday night to discuss the incident at the home which took place just a few weeks ago. Two people were arrested and neighborhood homes were evacuated after officials found explosive materials at the Durwood Crescent house.
The community meeting shed light on lingering questions that the neighborhood had following the incident. According to Henrico Police, nobody at the meeting was a part of the investigative team, as the investigation is ongoing.
The officer said the man arrested on March 16 was 52-year-old Henrico resident Michael Hardy. He is being held without bond after officials seized over 100 items –which police said were mostly drugs, firearms and bomb-making materials– from his home. A drug dog and robots were used during the search of the property.
https://www.wric.com/news/crime/police-seize-100-items-from-fortified-drug-house-in-henrico-neighborhood/
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