Serves you right to suffer

"There is risk in everything." Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

I am not a parent so maybe I am not qualified to comment on the matter. Still I think the push to damn the torpedoes and open the schools seems downright ridiculous if not homicidal. Just read that nearly one third of Florida's children have tested positive for the Covid 19 disease.

Of the 54,022 people under the age of 18 who have been tested for COVID-19 in Florida, 16,797 of them, or roughly 31%, have tested positive, data released Friday shows. In comparison, roughly 11% of everyone in the state who has been tested for the virus — roughly 2.8 million people — has tested positive.

In Florida, 213 children have been hospitalized for the virus and four of them have died. Those aged 15-17 make up the highest percentage of those hospitalized, at 29%, while those aged 10-14 ranked second at 26%, according to the state’s health department data. 

This saddens me. Maybe their mortality rate is lower but nobody knows what the long term health implications are for them if they do get sick. What kind of damage will their lungs and kidneys suffer, what sort of quality of life can they look forward to? And we don't know how they might transfer the disease to their teachers either. In Israel, they say they made a big mistake opening up the schools too early.

On June 3, two weeks after schools opened, more than 244 students and staff were found to test positive for COVID-19.According to the education ministry, 2,026 students, teachers, and staff have contracted COVID-19, and 28,147 are in quarantine due to possible contagion.Just in the first two weeks of July, 393 kindergartens and schools open for summer programs have been shuttered due to cases of COVID-19.

I think that it is proper at times for adults to take some risks and show some courage. I don't think that is something you foist on children, turning them into lab rats or guinea pig test subjects against a contagion with so many unknown qualities. And the attitude of the Orange Country School Board, recommending that they open fully with no masks or social distancing seems downright creepy if not homicidal.

But I'm not a parent, what do I know?

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My county Supervisor Jim Desmond is Mr. Gung Ho open it up, business, business, business . I get a video from him every day. He gets wackjobs like Dr. Scott Atlas or Dr. Kelly Victory to ply their little line of bullshit for him, nothing to see here folks. And one thing you hear over and over is that the risk of dying is very low for "normal" people.

But if you are fat, diabetic, immunosuppressed, hypertense or asthmatic and you contract the contagion there seems to be an unsaid, underlying theme to their message, you probably had it coming. God help you. Should have taken better care of yourself, sayonara.  I sense a feeling on the part of many that if you are not a perfect physical specimen, your death shouldn't really count.

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Fallbrook is climbing rapidly in the confirmed cases category, 197 203 211 232 now. But hey, with your young and perfect body, I am sure that you don't have anything to worry about.

Nakotah LaRance

Brilliant native hoop dancer Nakotah LaRance passed away in an accidental fall.

Marketing idea.

The venerable football team the Washington Redskins are in a bit of hot water over their outre non politically correct name.

Daniel Snyder and his hogs have finally smelled the coffee and are looking for a new name, and pronto. Because somebody is on the warpath.

I got to thinking and I came up with this one this morning. Let me know what you think. It would be a quick, easy change.

The Washington Foreskins - time to put a helmet on the helmet!

Get the hoodie hoodie. Talk about extra protection. You could affectionately call them the anteaters. They really didn't get beat, they just got clipped.

Trapper Bert Gross

I have been doing some genealogical work and through a combination of blind luck and persistence have recently come across a lot of new information on my family line.

My father's mother's grandmother was Chana Chaja Grossbard. She was born in the mid 19th century.

I have known a little bit about this line for a while but have learned some new information.

Prior to settling in Poland, they came from Lithuania. We are evidently related to a famous rabbi, Nahum (Grossbard) Maggid.

And this really blew my mind, one of my distant cousins was the Colorado trapper and mountain man Bert Gross.

This is a picture of Bert taken from the Denver Public Library Digital Collections. Annotated on the back was this: "Bert Gross, around Crested Butte, early 1900s, carried mail from Crested Butte to Gothic one winter on snowshoes while Mr. Block was postmaster."

The photo was taken by Borg Mesch, a renowned Swedish photographer and mountain climber. The summary states: Full seated portrait of Bert Gross with a dog and animal skins, Crested Butte, Gunnison County, Colorado; his rifle leans on his leg and he wears a feather headdress, gaiters, wool pants and a jacket with fringe. The photograph was taken around 1892.

According to family researchers, Bert was born Grossbard and moved from Lithuania to become a trapper here. I never envisioned a trapper in the family but I think it is pretty cool. My late stepbrother David Fisher was a well known mountain man in Colorado, lived in Estes Park, worked as a printer, went to all the Rendezvous and was a very cool guy. I am going to try to find more information on Bert Gross, if possible. If you run into anything let me know. You never know what you will find when you start digging.

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postcript: I just received some information that Bert's father in Lithuania was a famous rabbi, Yehuda Leib Grossbard, known as the "Saint of Tavrig." He must have given his pop fits when he went native. Because I read that his dad, the saint, beat him and his brother, a fine cantor, for not entering the rabbinate. So he and brother Ben changed their names and split.

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I found this snippet in a March, 22, 1912 Douglas County newspaper, the Record Journal:

Poor Bert, from his childhood squabbles with his dad to his unfortunate end at the El Paso mine, he was always caught between a rock and a hard place.

He died on March 13th 1912 and was buried at the Cripple Creek cemetery. His wife Lillie joined him in their final repose in April of 1922.

Divine hypocrisy

Many in the Christian world are upset that Turkey is proposing to convert this immense building, which is currently a museum, into a mosque.

The Hagia Sophia, located in Istanbul, was also once known as the Great Mosque of Ayasofya.

Built in 537, during the reign of the eastern Roman emperor Justinian I, it was first a Christian Orthodox Church, then was converted to Roman Catholicism in 1204, was retaken by the Eastern Orthodox in 1261 and then finally morphed into Islam after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, converted to a mosque by one Mehmed the Conqueror.

It remained a mosque for a little under five hundred years until it was turned into a museum by the secular Turkish government in 1931. Hard to keep track of all this without a scorecard but it has obviously served as a center of faith to many people and creeds over the ages. Who has a rightful claim to it? That is a question far beyond my paygrade.

But I will say that the Vatican has a lot of nerve here as they have engaged in the same sort of mosque and land grabbing on many occasions throughout time. Most faiths have. If you are the true religion, god wants you to pay special attention to the local real estate.

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If you want to subjugate a people the first thing you do is forbid their native language. The second thing is you steal their gods and banish their faith. Both of these tactics go a long way when destroying native culture. Let them know that we piss on their god.

So, in Jerusalem, we build the Islamic Mosque of Omar right on top of the ruins of the Second Temple of the vanquished Jews, the last tenants.

I am sure in turn that the Jews themselves previously pilfered more than a few purloined pulpits from the Philistines and Hittites.

The Spaniards took a similar tack in California and the southwest, placing Missions right on top of the kivas and the most prime real estate of the native inhabitants.

After despoiling a few young babes of course and exterminating a couple then existent populations.

For God and King of course.

They then instituted blasphemy laws and worked on wholesale conversion of the heathen natives.

This was replete with the occasional lopping off a local's foot who may have strayed out of line.

Many Indians got quite sore about this sort of thing, hence the ill fated Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

Hell, they are still sore, at least some I spoke with at the San Estevan del Rey Church at Acoma. People have long memories, even heathen savages.

Here you can see a round kiva inside a church building at Abó, one of the southern Salt Pueblos in New Mexico.

And a similar configuration at the Pecos Church.

It's in the Conquest 101 basic handbook. The first thing you do is kill the old gods.

And of course if you are a beneficiary of the "true religion" as most of us are, you can enact your ethnic cleansing and the resultant real estate grab relatively guilt free.

Cortes built a church right on top of an immense Aztec pyramid in Cholula.

In 1594, after settling in the city and claiming it for their own, the explorer and his minions built a church - La Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Los Remedios (Our Lady of Remedies Church), right on top of a pyramid hidden in a mountain.  

Which happens to be the largest pyramid in the world.

One of the most beautiful religious buildings I have ever visited is the Grand Mosque of Mezquita in Cordoba. Cordoba is located in Andalusia, in southern Spain.

Well that is what they called the building before the Catholic reconquest renamed it the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption anyway.

Tradition holds that a Visigoth church once stood on its site. There is no actual archaeological evidence of this but no matter.

This magnificent structure was constructed around 784 CE by the Umayyid ruler Abd Rahman I.

The building has 856 date palm shaped columns of jasper, onyx, marble, granite and porphyry. Prisms throw rainbows around in the structure with spectral abandon.

In 1236, Córdoba was conquered by King Ferdinand III of Castile, and the center of the mosque was converted into a Catholic cathedral.

On purely aesthetic terms, this did not help the building. While the Islamic bones of the structure are spatial and show perfect composition, the Christian ornamentation is purely topical window dressing. Ongepatch.

The conjunction of the two theological styles is just a really bad architectural fit.

I could go on and on with examples of this sort of thing occurring throughout time but there is no need. We all know it is ludicrous. G_d is much too busy judging the outcome of high school football games to busy himself with such mundane matters of title claims and real estate.

Every tribe has done it. Nobody should be shocked or feign innocence or righteous indignation. That's it, I'm out.

Weather Report Suite ~ 07.19.1974

Tuckered out

Tucker Carlson has been spouting racist, sexist and offensive twaddle since he has been on the air. Yet he claims to not be a bigot.

Now his head writer, Blake Neff, has been outed as a racist cyber stalker and a misogynist incel.

"Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?"  "I wouldn't get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no."

The higher ups at Fox are not happy about this development and have promised that Carlson will explain all this away somehow Monday night on his show. Boy has he got some 'splaining to do. We tend to judge people by the company they keep. And Neff is not the first racist in Carlson's employ.

Neff is on record as saying that whatever Tucker reads off the teleprompter comes right off his keyboard. Carlson hired the Dartmouth chum when he ran the Daily Caller, which he co-founded. They are like each other's intellectual doppelganger or soulmate.

So what can T.C. say? Defend, bury or run away? He can try to completely plead ignorance and disassociate himself from the racist swine but that might be difficult considering they are as tight as your shadow. He can throw him under the bus and feign shock. He can say that everybody is a racist and sexist and it is not really a bad thing although the honchos might not want to hear that right now. He can fess up and admit that he agrees with him but that isn't going to happen or the odds are short of that happening because it would require too much honesty.

So what does he say, what can he say, besides blaming the left for everything  that has come down, which is a given. When victimizers are cornered they usually magically turn themselves into victims in a split second.

Should be very interesting.

Microbial petri dishes

There is some classic double talk going on in Washington right now regarding exactly how safe it is to send children back to school. Betsy DeVos had this to say on the Sunday morning talk shows:

“There's nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous. We know that children contract and have the virus at far lower incidence than any other part of the population."

Adm. Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services who serves as the administration’s coronavirus testing czar, also defended the recommendations Sunday, calling them “right on target.” 

Interestingly enough, an internal CDC memo has surfaced that pretty much maintains the exact opposite.

Internal documents from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned K-12 school and university reopenings would be the “highest risk” for the spread of coronavirus, according to a New York Times report. The report was issued the same week Trump and his administration pushed for schools to reopen. The Times released the CDC’s 69-page document marked “For Internal Use Only” and found “noticeable gaps” in all of the K-12 reopening plans it reviewed. “While many jurisdictions and districts mention symptom screening, very few include information as to the response or course of action they would take if student/faculty/staff are found to have symptoms, nor have they clearly identified which symptoms they will include in their screening,” the report stated in a “talking points” section. “In addition, few plans include information regarding school closure in the event of positive tests in the school community.”

Now I am not a virologist, epidemiologist, school administrator or even a parent. I sell antiques, blog and read the news. But there seems something very shortsighted and lemming like with this "open the schools up, what's the worst that could happen?" attitude.

I know where it comes from. Trump needs to convince America that everything is hunky dory and the virus is going to go away so that the economy comes back and he can get re-elected. And these "professionals" will say anything, they will tell you the sky is green if it improves his chances.

But I think we should take a look at what happens when you bring lots of kids together in confined spaces. Have you heard about Camp Kanakuk in Missouri? Eighty two kids and their counselors were sent home from the Christian Camp with confirmed cases of Covid 19 last week.

Seems like a risky bet to play with kids lives right now. While they have extremely low mortality rates, their older teachers don't and some of the physical damage the kids and their teachers will suffer will stay with them their entire lives.

Sounds really fucking stupid.

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Many in the hispanic community are calling for a boycott of Goya food for their CEO's recent slavish fawning over Trump, a man who has referred to them as rapists and criminals. Goya Food's CEO Robert Unanue says that a boycott amounts to a suppression of speech.

Does it? He is certainly free to say whatever he wants to and to support whomever he wants to politically. And is the general population not also equally free to spend their money wherever they see fit? If it is a suppression of speech it is entirely self induced and not a denial of anyone's rights. And of course, supporters of the political slant of Unanue are free to buy as much of his product as they care to. Anglos are going to be eating a lot of rice and beans, methinks.

My wife and I have been told that certain people will not shop in our stores because they hate our liberal politics. That is also their right.

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An excellent and thought provoking article on religious liberty and Christian political power by the conservative writer David French. I agree with much of what he says.

It would slander American Protestant Christianity to neglect the way in which it often used its immense power for good, including by mounting the Christian case for abolition and civil rights. For all its flaws, and for all its failures to fully extend religious freedom on an equal basis to all faiths, there are reasons why Catholic and Jewish immigrants flocked to this still-imperfect nation. There are reasons why Muslims have left Muslim lands to seek refuge in a nation indelibly shaped by its Protestant establishment. 
But to heal the racial breach, it may be necessary to rethink partisan alignments, to be open to understanding why Christian brothers and sisters who have the same theology do not have the same spiritual, political, and cultural priorities. To be always Christian does not mean declaring one will be always Republican—or always Democrat.

Stairway To Gilligan's Island

Order and law

Respect for the law has definitely suffered in this country. This is not a matter of left or right, both sides pick and choose what laws they will abide by. This is not a new problem. But we now have sheriffs throughout the country telling their governors that they will not enforce mask laws. We have anarchists tearing down gates to private property and inflicting property damage and painting graffiti on innocent businesses. We have presidents pardoning and commuting sentences for admitted liars who have pled guilty and been duly convicted of felonies. If our elected leaders decide not to follow the laws, can we really expect the citizenry to?

There is a small park near my office called the Village Square. People put a lot of love into its construction some fifteen or twenty years ago. It has no skateboarding signs clearly visible at both entrances. But I see parents watch as their kids skateboard over the fragile tile with nary a peep. I have gotten into it with the parents and kids on several occasions. How dare I chastise their children? Obviously bad parenting plays a big role in this selective respect for law and property. And in my town at least, the cops do nothing.

This is a serious societal breakdown. There is little respect for law or authority. And those that enforce that authority have perhaps even less respect for the citizenry. Things are so politicized and weaponized in the current climate, I am afraid that it is only going to get worse.

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On an entirely different subject.

"I think I made a mistake."

The Red Telephone

Everybody is expendable in Trumpworld.

Trump bared his fangs at Lindsey Graham after the Scotus decision went down, accused him of not doing enough as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee to thwart the tax return investigation.

Always looking for a convenient fall guy, I guess it was Lindsey's turn in the barrel. And it is funny because Graham has sold himself out for this guy and taken so much shrapnel.

But it doesn't  matter, it is only about the orange emperor, every second. Loyalty is apparently a one way street. Of course, don't hold your breath waiting for the spineless Graham to bite back.

Someone sent this article over this morning from a former Trump admin guy who said that "Trump would throw Mike Pence in a woodchipper if he needed to." Of course he would. He'd throw his own mother to the wolves and not even blink.

I have had the displeasure of knowing one or two narcissists in my life who are exactly the same way. It is always about them and nothing more. They take other people down as needed.

Fallbrook is a Covid hot spot

Check out this article on NBC 7 San Diego. Watch the video. The "Friendly Village"now has one of the worst covid 19 spikes in the county.

Be careful!

Heroes in Phoenix

Bittersweet but awesome story behind the paywall at WaPo. Retired marine and ex football player dives to save a three year old child thrown by a mother out of a burning building. Unfortunately the mother perished. Bravo, Philip Banks and D’Artagnan Alexander, another hero who ran into the burning building and saved the young boy's sister.

Daily Rant

Education leaders need to examine real data and weigh risk. … Risk is involved in everything we do, from learning to ride a bike to riding a rocket into space and everything in between. Betsy DeVos

Do we really want to risk our children and their teachers too? Is this not the most hideous woman in the country? Single handedly bent on destroying our public education system, now she wants to go after the poor children too. DeVos doesn't really care how it gets done either, that is somebody else's problem.

“They must fully open. And they must be fully operational,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said. “And how that happens is best left to education and community leaders.”

You figure it out.

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Interesting article about the rodeo near Phoenix the other day in the NYT. Appears the wranglers aren't really into the mask thing. But the last sentence is what stuck with me... Bit fatalistic if you ask me.

In Eagar, the July Fourth parade that has boasted the likes of John Wayne among its horseback participants in years gone by, will step off at 10 a.m. on Saturday as planned, Bryce Hamblin, Eagar’s mayor, said. The town in eastern Arizona would “err on the side of freedom,” he said, pandemic or no. Thousands of tourists are expected.Mr. Hamblin said he spoke to an aide to Mr. Ducey last week, and said he came away with an understanding of the governor’s guidance. “What I get from his orders is he’s leaving this stuff to our local governments, and he’s not going to affect people’s constitutional rights,” Mr. Hamblin said. “I can’t think of a better example than the 4th of July for celebrating those freedoms.”Of calls he has received urging him to cancel the event, Mr. Hamblin said, “I’ve gotten attention from all around the world and people that don’t have real good things to say,. But I’m not the mayor of the world. I’m the mayor of Eagar, and we’ve got to move on.”Mr. Hamblin said that mask-wearers were, of course, welcome at the event.“I don’t want to be insensitive to the disease and the impact it has on some people, but it’s not going away,” he said. “Everybody’s going to get it.”

Big tough cowboys, say "Why fight it? Just cry uncle. It's inevitable."

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New York Times has another article worth perusing today, Churches were eager to reopen. Now they are a major source of covid. Now I am not a religious man but I do believe that the good lord intended for you to think rationally and keep yourself safe. Not engage in this sort of "if I get it I get it, it is god's will" stuff. Not going to make god real happy.

Mr. Satterwhite, the pastor in Oregon, said that scrutiny had fallen unfairly on churches, while businesses with outbreaks did not face the same backlash. “I think that there is an effort on the part of some to use things like this to try to shut churches down,” he said, adding that he appreciated Mr. Trump’s supportive remarks about churches being essential.When weighing his responsibility as a faith leader, Mr. Satterwhite said, he returned to his beliefs. “My personal belief is, I have faith in God,” he said. “If God wants me to get Covid, I’ll get Covid. And if God doesn’t want me to get Covid, I won’t.”

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Trump said yesterday that 99% of Covid cases are harmless and that the disease will disappear in a couple more weeks. By my count that makes the twentieth time he has said that. And he is wrong on his facts and his math. And we don't have the best mortality numbers in the world. We have the second worst.

At the moment, the data show that slightly more than 4 percent of the cases in the United States have led to death. The count at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lags behind private data, indicates a death rate of nearly 4.5 percent.Johns Hopkins University, in a comparison of the observed case-fatality rate of the 20 countries most affected by covid-19, calculates that the United States ranked seventh worst, with 4.4 percent. The United States ranks second-worst in terms of deaths per 100,000 people.

Facts. Such curious beasts. This guy lies better than anybody that the world has ever seen. Now he is going after the nation's experts. First throw Fauci under the bus. What does he know? Birx and Redfield are sure to be next.

"I think we are in a good place. I disagree with him," Trump said in an interview on Tuesday when questioned about Fauci's assertion the US is still "knee-deep in the first wave" of the pandemic.Trump accused Fauci of waffling on early decisions in the crisis, saying he was better off ignoring experts and trusting his instincts."Dr. Fauci said don't wear masks and now he says wear them," he told Gray Television's Greta Van Susteren. "And he said numerous things. Don't close off China. Don't ban China. I did it anyway. I didn't listen to my experts and I banned China. We would have been in much worse shape. You wouldn't believe the number of deaths more we would have had if we didn't do the ban."Nonetheless, Trump insisted to Van Susteren that in the next two to four weeks, “I think we’re going to be in very good shape.”

Your mouth to Allah's ear. 

Pete Seeger

Here is a rather depressing banjo blues tune done in Seeger's inimitable and laconic slow rolling style.

Yahrzeit

I was getting gas yesterday at Main St. and couldn't help looking at the fellow in front of me. "I know you from somewhere. You been in town long?" He told me that he had been in Fallbrook for thirty seven years, a shade less than I had.

I gave him the once over, he was thin and swarthy but his clothes were clean and his tennis shoes were new. Where had I seen him before? Was wracking my brain. I asked him his name and filed it away. He seemed pretty okay, moderately verbal but where in the hell did I know him from?

I left and drove away. It took a few minutes for me to process the information and for the light to go on. A heavily bedraggled version of this fellow can be sometimes seen standing in the middle of the street cursing, accosting, trapped in a heavily paranoid and angry schizophrenia.

Obviously he got some meds, got some help, got a haircut. Now he was just another guy and actually quite pleasant. On the depressive side of the bipolar roller coaster he was really a decent chap. Wonder if he knows where he has been? It made me feel good to see that he could come back to earth, gave me hope. He found his way back. Hope it keeps.

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I have had a couple appraisals this week. One yesterday was for a woman I have known since I opened, now almost ninety. Her husband was a bank honcho, he found out he had lung cancer and they gave him a week to live. He died right when they said he would. She was a decorator and has some beautiful 18th century furnishings and paintings.

She has to downsize and I'm looking at a lovely French desk when she says that there is some sterling in the drawer and to check it out. I open the drawer and there, laying flat, is a photograph of President Trump. I looked at her and said, "Hey ___y, you don't have to hide this stuff on account of me. I don't care who you vote for or like politically."

She turned to me and said, "Well, the word is out that Leslie doesn't like Trump and I didn't want to upset you." I laughed. I guess with my wife's heavy Facebook presence and my blog, word gets around. Funny. Please, don't hide the pictures. It really doesn't matter to me.

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We all have our tastes and there is no right way of thinking aesthetically. One man's trash and all that. Still, we all have our prejudices. And one of mine is an intense aversion to clown paintings. Underneath the pancake makeup of every happy clown lurks the deranged heart of a homicidal killer, at least in my book. Who can forget John Wayne Gacey?

Anyway I got to my appraisal last week, which was a freebie to a fellow merchant, and she started pulling clown canvases off of the walls and out of the closets until I was ready to plotz. And I may have said something intemperate, thinking that they were another family members but it turned out that it was her lifelong passion and I felt like a heel that needed to hurl. And need to tell her that the genre is dead and some of the very expensive ones are maybe worth a fifth of what they paid for them originally but you don't want to hurt anybody's feelings and I am trying to figure out how to do it with the least amount of trauma. What can you say? Tastes change and maybe some day this stuff will all be really valuable again. Then the joke will be on me. But if you want to know the real market for stuff like this, check ebay. It is all there with a big red nose in living color.

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Was showing a print yesterday, walking it over to a friend, when the mat caught some air and it folded in half, a crease right down the pipes. Took it the restorer today. Will see what happens but boy did I feel stupid. Could have just pulled fifteen hundred dollars out of my pocket and lit it on fire.

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My brother died three years ago today. The pain remains fresh in my heart. I think about him every day. Lift a glass, light a candle for Buzzy.

Shear horror

EZBraid, straight from a Chinese Prison camp to you!

You know those cool hair extensions you bought, have you happened to check where they originally came from?

Would it bother you if you knew they were shorn from the tresses of Chinese political prisoners being held in prison camps? There is a good chance that they did.

Last week, Federal officials seized thirteen tons of hair products suspected to have been harvested in Western Chinese internment camps. This is the second such seizure this year.

As I have written about previously, the Chinese government has been holding approximately one million ethnic Uighur and Kazakh minorities in Xianjiang prisons for the last four years. And word is, they have been cutting the prisoners' hair like they were penned farm animals.

This is obviously despicable, as is so much of their behavior these days. Don't support them by buying purloined hair. It is very bad karma.

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It is the Dalai Lama's birthday today, he is eighty five. Happy Birthday. The spiritual leader is from Tibet, a sovereign territory brutally seized by Beijing in 1951 following the Battle of Chamdo and incorporated into the People's Republic. Tibet had been a unified sovereign land since 605 but that meant nothing to the Chinese aggressors. They suppressed the people's language, religion and culture in their predacious expansionism. Somewhere between two hundred thousand and a million native Tibetans died in the horribly named Great leap forward.

The Chinese have never stopped their predatory behavior. In 1962 they fought a brief war with India over the Arachanal Pradesh and Aksai Chin regions near Southern Tibet. Their expansionism never ceases.

Unfortunately China is still engaging in this sort of behavior, both in the border with India and in the South China Sea where they now regularly bully Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.

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The people in Hong Kong were giddy when they secured their release from Britain in 1997. China had agreed to institute a "one country, two systems" arrangement and protect the freedoms and independence the people of Hong Kong enjoyed. We now know that was false. They were sold a bill of goods. The Chinese are instituting the same totalitarian heavy fist and oppression that the people in Communist China have been brutally subject to since the Communists took over.

Under the Xi government, Chinese officials have purged political opposition; bloggers, activists and lawyers have been unjustly prosecuted; stringent controls have been imposed to censor not only media, but universities, businesses and non-governmental organizations; citizens and corporations have been targeted with surveillance; and people perceived as dissidents have been subjected to arbitrary detention, torture and abuse.

Anyone who protests the regime is arrested and disappears without a trace. In an incredible irony, many Hong Kong residents are fleeing to the mortal enemy of the regime, Taiwan. Some are making it to Britain. This will not end well.

There are many legitimate complaints about our own government here in the United States. But at least we Americans can engage in open dissent and point out the failures of our system and leaders without being whisked off to a prison camp and tortured. Try that in China. You could lose more than your hair.

All Fall Down

Pigeon poop

There are some good stature memes going around. Two or three people sent this one today.

Which makes me think of my all time favorite New Yorker cartoon.  Never made the final cut, too offensive for the prim and proper, I suppose.

I took this shot which I call "the shame" while visiting my late mother near Washington D.C. in 2011. Could have called it "the guilt" I suppose. Lot of processing mistakes back then but you live and learn. Hopefully.

Another round

I had skipped breakfast yesterday, went hiking and then worked all day on the Goodrich material. It was near four o'clock and I was starving. I pushed myself back from the computer and walked down to the yogurt shop for a tuna sandwich. Closed. Street was pretty dead. My mask firmly tied around my face I walked across the street to Coffee, corks and cuisine, their open sign was on.

But no, no food at that hour except expensive pastries that didn't quite hit the spot for me. I grabbed a bag of potato chips to tide me over but the barista was working on one of those complicated sissy drinks for somebody that takes for ever and I put the bag back and split.

So I walked over to Harry's Sports Bar. Harry's has just emerged from a messy entanglement with the state over their liquor license, which was suspended for what seemed like an eternity, through no fault of their own. The old owner croaked and his son never did the transfer properly and the State alleged all sorts of nefarious things, dragged their feet in typical bureaucratic fashion but finally gave it up and relented. Can't be easy for any business to survive but even harder during a pandemic. Bar is now open but you also have to order food.

I like Harry's. I like the owner Scott and the food is really quite good. The regular clientele is back on their familiar stools and it is like nothing has ever changed. Didn't skip a beat. I am not much of a drinker but what was that line from the movie Being there, I like to watch?"

So they were making my reuben sandwich and I was waiting at a table near the end of the bar and I was talking to a guy I used to drink with at the Moose Lodge, whose name is not important, an older fellow. And I looked around and realized that the picture I was seeing was no different than any other picture you can see of any bar in America right now, people elbow to elbow, crammed together, not a mask in sight. How could there be, you can't exactly drink a shot or a beer through one?

And I thought, this is the worst place I can be right now in my health condition. It's a microbe's wet dream. And these people are completely oblivious. So I asked my friend if he was worried at all?

"Nahh. Covid is a big hoax. It will go away right after the election in November. It's all politics."

And I asked him if he had heard about the guy who just died in Lake Elsinore, Thomas Macias, who contracted the disease at a barbecue and died the day after his Facebook post, which warned people that it was no joke?

"That guy didn't die of corona, he died of a heart attack."

There was no getting through to him. Facts be damned, it is all a big political conspiracy. I looked it up, there was no heart attack but the man did have diabetes and that is apparently a problem for covid sufferers, as is asthma and a host of other pre existing conditions. My friend and the other people at the bar, are seemingly totally unconcerned, but then again it might be the alcohol talking.

No different from any other bar I guess. No way to do it risk free. I guess people are entitled to pick their poison.

I paid for my sandwich and split. It is going to be hard for me to go back in there for a while, until the contagion blows over, the place scared me.

A few of today's birds.

Greater egret

Juvenile black crowned night heron

I got up about five and made my way up to my nature sanctuary. Wanted to enjoy myself on the fourth, typically one of my favorite days of the year.

I didn't get too serious about the photography, never took the whopper lens out of the car.

I was content to chill and enjoy and I did. Had a great walk.

Don't have the energy to process them all or write so I will throw a few pics at you.

A nuttals woodpecker

white tailed kite

white faced ibis

I saw legendary birder and all around nice guy Chet McGaugh out there at the Walker Ponds and he pointed me to a peregrine falcon on a pole down a ways at the Ramona Duck Club.

Too far away to get a decent shot but I appreciate the tip!

Chet said that he saw a least bittern earlier but I never saw it.

Here is a picture of a great blue heron chomping on a dragonfly breakfast.

Not a lot of other stuff to report. Some kestrels and red tailed hawks.

I ran into a blue grosbeak that was singing really loudly and beautifully.

I didn't realize they had such a pretty trill.  I didn't get a good shot but I got a decent shot or two.

Saw a couple tree swallows on the tree where I always see them.

I was very happy to see the kite. It has been a while. Such a gorgeous bird!

As I have said many times before, I love this place!

leadbelly

Lindsey loves Joe

Karen Dalton - Something's on your mind

Early July Bird Report

I have had a lot of strange birds in the yard of late. Something started calling at evening last night and then continued through the night. I've never heard the particular call in forty years here. Leslie hasn't either.

I've had Lawrence's goldfinches at the niger feeder this week. Don't recall them either. Three different neighbor's tell me that they have seen golden eagles on both Vista Del Rio and Gavilan Mt. of late. I have not but guess it is possible. A couple decades ago, I saw a nesting pair in a remote area of the gorge east of me, past Morgan Springs.

And I was under an avocado tree the other day and a falcon flew right at me. I am not sure if it was  a prairie or peregrine falcon but the black eye banding and dihedral angle was unmistakable. That is a first. Funny thing, it was flying very slowly after a bird, more like a Cooper's under the tree limbs. But it was not a hawk but a falcon. I didn't have my camera but hope to see it again some day.

The neighborhood raptors know all about the bird feeders, you can be sure.

Here is a picture that I have never before processed, of a peregrine falcon at Torrey Pines from two years ago, only had been flying for a couple days and landed three feet from me on this dead branch. Live for and love moments like that.

Anyhow, I am determined to clear up some puzzles about what might be crawling and flying into the yard, especially at night. I bought a trail camera yesterday on Amazon. Have to figure out where to put it but we have had so many owls around lately, I look forward to catching some digitally in the infrared bandwidth. Perhaps a puma or bobcat too if I am really lucky.

Cutting edge

Joint Chiefs Chairman Confirms Soldiers Were Issued Bayonets For DC Protests.

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Kerry's Klipsch

My friend Kerry is an audiophile. He has one of the two best sounding audio systems I have ever heard, probably the best, to my ears. In this video he shows off his 1948 Klipsch speaker, the twentieth one off the production line and the earliest factory model known to exist.

He did a beautiful job restoring the corner horn and he says it sounds wonderful. He is going to put it for sale on ebay. Kerry sent me this note with the video:

This is the oldest factory-built K-horn known to still exist. The Klipsch factory in Hope Arkansas - now the Klipsch museum - was constructed sometime in 1948,  this 1948 Klipschorn was the 20th one that was built there. 
The first Klipschorn, number 101, the prototype, featured a Western Electric 555W compression driver. It was built by Paul Klipsch at his home in Hope Arkansas, along with 19 other K-horns, including the seven units he built for the Baldwin Organ company.
For what it’s worth I was told this early Klipsch speaker is a Style 6, but the tag identifies it as a “Type K-3-C”
The face and top were refinished with Khaya, a type of African Mahogany. I cut the pieces from a 4’X8’ panel of pre-finished veneered MDF. The light colored wood is iron-on maple veneer. The grill cloth was purchased from Amazon.

If you have never heard a Klipsch, there is really nothing like it. Incredibly powerful across the sound spectrum. Kudos to my friend for a wonderful restoration job. Maybe I will get a chance to listen to it one day before it sells!

Any audiophiles interested in purchasing the rare speaker, please let me know and I will put you in touch with him. But know, this baby needs a decent size room.

The interesting history of Paul W. Klipsch.

Bert Jansch

Sure, Rick.

"People are smart. Give them good information. Tell them where there is the spread of the virus -- the places that are at risk. If you tell me a restaurant has had patients or employees with coronavirus, I would probably avoid it for a while. So, give us information. You don't have to tell me to wear a mask. You don't have to tell me to shut things down. Give me more information." Florida Senator Rick Scott

Bountygate and Presidents for life.

Trump says that the Russian bounty story is "made up fake news." But it was obviously real enough for his intelligence agencies.

Some of Trump’s own senior intelligence officials viewed the information as credible enough to warn the Pentagon and allies so they could ensure they had measures in place to protect their forces in Afghanistan, and to begin developing options for responding to the Russian operation, national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien said Wednesday.

Now the real story is starting to trickle out, Afghan Contractor Handed Out Russian Cash to Kill Americans, Officials Say.

American and Afghan officials for years have maintained that Russia was running clandestine operations to undermine the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and aid the Taliban.But they only recently concluded a Russian spy agency was paying bounties for killing coalition troops, including Americans, which the Kremlin and the Taliban have denied.According to officials briefed on the matter, U.S. intelligence officials believe the program is run by Unit 29155, an arm of the Russian military intelligence agency known as the G.R.U. that has carried out assassinations and other operations overseas.

*
Remember Russian democracy? The glory days of Gorbachev and Yeltsin? Long gone. Putin is trying to declare himself supreme leader now until 2036. You don't think Trump would jump at that chance? And the same type of people that support the Vlad there support the Donald here.

Jonatha Brooke - Imposter

Perham Nahl

Perham Nahl -Thirteenth labor of Hercules - Spencer Helfen Fine Art

Spencer Helfen sent a picture of this fabulous poster he is selling to his clientele this morning. Spencer, the owner of Spencer Helfen Fine Arts, is one of the nicest and most knowledgable dealers in the business.

While many of our peers are content to follow the safe route, Spencer's keen perception, knowledge of history and art and visual acuity has allowed him to find and promote powerful work before the rest of the crowd is generally aware of it.

He has done much to promote the work of women artists and I respect him a great deal.

I post images of this poster because it is wonderful and I have never seen it before. I reprint it here with his permission.

It was created by the great Perham Nahl (1869-1935) for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco. It was picked to be the official poster for the exposition.

I wrote him to commend him on his acquisition this morning and he wrote back and said that he was told by the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco that this particular poster is very rare.

It was created in 1913-14 and this particular work was exhibited in the show Jewel City: Art from San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition,
de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA, October 17, 2015 – January 10, 2016.

Perham Nahl was a wonderful Bay Area artist. I have had his prints before and mostly knew of him as Gene Kloss's mentor and teacher at U.C. Berkeley.

The following is Eden Hughes bio on the artist:

Etcher, painter, lithographer, illustrator. Born in San Francisco, CA on Jan. 11, 1869, the son of Hugo Wilhelm Arthur NahI. Perham first studied art with his father and uncle Charles, and later continued at the Mark Hopkins Institute (1899-1906). When the earthquake and fire destroyed most of San Francisco in 1906, he traveled to Europe to study in Paris and in Munich at the Heyman Academy. After returning to California in 1907, he taught at the CCAC for 20 years. In 1912 he was appointed assistant professor of drawing at UC Berkeley and by 1929 had gained a full professorship. A long stay in Mexico during 1923-24 generated much of his later subject matter. Oriental art was also a special interest; he conducted several seminars to Japan. One of his best-known works is the poster for the PPIE entitled Thirteenth Labor of Hercules. NahI died in an auto accident in Berkeley on April 9, 1935. A memorial exhibition of his works was held at UC a few months later. Exh: Calif. State Fair, 1884; San Francisco Art Association, 1890s; Alaska-Yukon Expo (Seattle), 1909 (bronze medal); PPIE, 1915 (silver medal for oils and monotypes, 1st prize for poster); Bohemian Club, 1922; Calif. Society of Etchers, 1926 (prize); U C, 1936 (memorial); Crocker Museum (Sacramento), 1989 (solo). In: CPLH; De Young Museum; Oakland Museum; Bohemian Club; UC Berkeley Museum; Crocker Museum; CHS. lnvw; Charles Christian Nahi, Artist of the Gold Rush; Ber; AAA 1919-33; Fifteen and Fifty; CAR; Antiques West, May 1989; NY Times, 4-9-1935 and Art Digest, 5-15-1935 (obits).