Leif Erikson Day

Today marks the holiday celebrating Nordic heritage in America; also, jointly with Columbus Day, celebrating the spirit of exploration.

Many believe that roughly a millennium ago, Leif Erikson — a Norse explorer — and his crew were the first Europeans to reach the shores of North America.  His spirit of adventure, curiosity, and resilience would inspire generations of Danes, Finns, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes to sail across an ocean and begin new lives in America.  These immigrants built bustling homes and enriched their communities, supporting and realizing the American Dream.  They fought for our freedoms in the military; built new churches, businesses, and schools; and spearheaded social movements.  Today, Nordic communities continue to enrich the fabric of the Nation. 

Congress needs to step up

From American's Newspaper of Record.

I kid, really. I'm not yet convinced of the stories about FEMA blocking humanitarian aid. Not that I think they'd hesitate if someone pointed out that a blank had been left in an 80-page application: they might not do it to exact revenge on a lot of mouth-breathing alt-right hillbillies, but they'd certainly feel justified in some kind of safety-first protocol stretched insanely out of proportion to the emergency circumstances. FEMA is very comfortable dealing with other huge, sclerotic bureaucracies. They seem to lack the faintest clue what first and second responders need to do, and everyone is probably lucky if they hog some of the last few decent short-term rental spaces available and sit by their phones awaiting orders. A few years from now, some of them may be dispensing some helpful aid to strapped local governments.

UPDATE: After reading Thomas Doubting's linked blog account of another NC mountain community's experience, I'm thinking I judged all of FEMA too harshly. They must have some people who aren't pointy-headed bureaucrats. Not that any of them came to my county, as far as I know. The one FEMA bigwig who addressed my Commissioners Court made me angrier than I've often been in my life, and spurred me to run for office.

Testing newfound ability to add images using Chrome instead of Brave, here is a dog we rescued last year, on her way home from being spayed. She was successfully treated for heartworms and adopted by a couple with a dog so similar they swear they are brother and sister from the same litter reunited:

Another Benghazi narrowly averted?

I don't like to jump to conclusions about single-source stories, but this one seems like a pretty sober, detailed account.

Forty U.S. Army soldiers who were in Israel as the advance team for what they thought was a routine training exercise last October 7 suddenly found themselves in the middle of a war, unarmed, and being forced to beg reluctant Pentagon officials to send an Air Force plane to extract them.

Approximately a quarter of the soldiers were just miles from Gaza in off-base housing near the IDF’s Tze’elim base when the attack began. A group of local Israelis – IDF reservists, police officers, and ordinary citizens – got them to the base, which Hamas terrorists were quickly heading toward. With his men in mortal danger, the U.S. team leader requested permission to open the arms locker so they could retrieve their firearms but was denied at the US Central Command level and “denied and/or ignored” at a level above that, according to a military intelligence analyst with knowledge of the mission and exfiltration.

Glitch?

Apparently I can post here, but I can't comment. All I get is "failed to publish, try again later."

"Disaster Equity"

Apparently this is what FEMA is doing instead of coming out here. 

That's ok. Like I said in the comments, we haven't missed them. Private, volunteer, and local efforts did almost everything; we did have a little help from State DOT that was appreciated. If they hadn't come either, though, we could have handled that too: a surprising number of people up here own what Thomas' post calls "track hoes," more commonly known as excavators. A lot of the heavy work was done by these private citizens with their own resources. Chainsaws are likewise nearly universal here, and generators of one sort or another aren't uncommon as power outages are fairly regular occurrences as trees get dropped on lines or transformers. 

They don't usually last for more than a week, almost two weeks now for those still without power. This commentary reflecting on what happens when the electricity dies is worth reading. For me, the loss of power was probably a healthy experience: earlier to bed and earlier to rise, plenty of hard work, and thus I probably physically improved overall. 

For our neighbors who are on oxygen, however, it's a potential death sentence to lose power to their oxygen concentrators. As I mentioned in an early post, this has been a major focus of ours: so far, I don't think we have lost even one of them. I would not have predicted that ten days ago.

For others, the darkness is depressing and maddening. Boredom is also a common complaint: it's hard to read by candlelight, and all the usual diversions were gone. The only person who told me that he and his female companion were "suffering" had those kinds of psychological complaints: she was having "panic attacks" because of the early darkness; he was probably mostly suffering from having to be cooped up with her, I would ungenerously speculate based on our brief encounter. It's hard for me not to push those sorts of complaints into the category of "whining," which is forbidden in my house -- my only two rules for my son, growing up, were "No Whining" and "Grow Stronger" -- but I suppose that psychological misery is perhaps the worst kind. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter; but if you do, if you really do, it really does, at least to you. I guess that's a kind of standard for equity.

I was glad to see our local EMC's trucks yesterday and today. The EMC apparently sent its trucks to Florida to pre-position for Helene, which was certain to hit there but not certain to hit here. That's part of why it took so long for power to get back up here: they were busy in Florida, and others had to come from elsewhere until they could return. Today I've seen quite a few of them running around while I was testing out my new motorcycle tire. 

Hopefully they'll be able to get the power back on for those still without it. Frankly I'm impressed with them: I expected some of these places to be a month or more given the amount of damage, but they report 90% of their customers back online. That includes some remote farms so far back in the woods that I didn't know they existed -- or sometimes even that the trails that lead to those homes existed -- until this rescue effort began. Bless the linemen, because they're carrying a tremendous amount of weight. 

More Reports from NC

I've posted links to several first-hand reports by a ham radio operator named Thomas in Buncombe County. These seem to be a good second viewpoint on the situation. Grim has the rescuer / responder view covered and is quite busy with it all. Thomas has more time to write detailed reports and post photos.

Thomas has two more out discussing how his local community came together, the various kinds of help they've gotten (volunteer, local, FEMA, NC National Guard, etc.) and various rumors that are running around.

One Week Report

Community, Coordination, and Misinformation

In the second report here he also talks about disaster tourism and why some people claiming to be volunteers have been turned away from his area.

Update: Here are the earlier reports from Thomas.

Alas for the Bobarosa

One of the great biker bars died in the storm, down as it was on the shoulders of the Pigeon river. 

Another of the greats, Mauhuffers of Indian Beach, is gravely threatened by the next storm. 

October 7

I’ve been a little busy lately, and it’s no surprise that I have lost track of time. Still, we ought to mark the anniversary of the brutal attack of last year, when perfectly innocent people were killed by Hamas in what amounts to an act of blood magic, an attempt to conjure a final reckoning with Israel and probably an attempt to bring about the end of the world— to provoke the End Times according to their particular theory of Islamic eschatology. 

Reportedly Iran tested an atomic weapon on the 5th of this year. Definitely there was a seismic event there. 

Lepanto

 Today marks the 453rd anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, where Christian naval forces turned back the Ottomans in a decisive battle.  One interesting note is that Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was one of the soldiers on the ships, and apparently acquitted himself well in the battle.  It also marks the feast of the Holy Rosary, as Pope Pius V called for all of Europe to pray the Rosary for victory, and he then attributed the victory to the Rosary and pilgrimage.

Chesterton memorialized the battle in a poem- "Lepanto"

The first verse:

Lepanto

By G. K. Chesterton

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Running the Wheels Off

We have no functional spares, but hopefully as things calm down we will have time to replace things. I swapped the last one on the Wolf Mountain run a few days ago. Not only department vehicles but personal ones have been ridden hard and put away wet. 

For example, I think I got the good out of this motorcycle tire. 

I’ve been on it every day since we got the roads clear enough to ride. I’ve also been through two pair of boots, two saw chains, and a bar. Not that the boots nor the saw nor the tire were new, though one of the saw chains was. 

UPDATE: 

We must be doing all right if the community is bringing us pound cakes. 

Lasagna too; some Italian-American woman who lives here brought us a great one. I happened upon her the next day on patrol and complimented her lasagna highly; when I got back to the station several hours later, I found she’d dropped off six more. 

In Praise of Starlink

Ten days ago I woke to a world without power. All the cell towers had been knocked down. The 911 center was out. All roads were impassable. Landlines were flooded and inoperable. There was no communication at all, not by ground, not by wire, except for the handheld radio that let me communicate with other members of the fire/rescue squad. With chainsaws we began the work of opening the ground lines of communication, and by the end of the day we had at least linked up with each other. 

Once we got to the station, though, we had Starlink. Hooked to a truck, powered by that truck's own diesel engine, the Starlink system worked in the worst hours of the disaster. As long as you were standing by the truck, you could make calls, you could get to the internet. We could communicate with family, and as we opened the roads, we could drive that truck around the district to let people reach out and let their own family know they had survived. 

Generously, Starlink is extending its efforts to help in North Carolina, but I am already grateful to them just for providing their normal service. When nothing else worked, they were dependable. It reminded me of Sam's realization, walking through Mordor, that the stars were ever above Sauron's power, untouchable and pure. Likewise Helene could knock down every cell tower, every power line, and so many trees that you could not at first move: but she couldn't touch the stars, nor the satellites. 

MREs

They aren’t really. They’re much more digestible than the things we give out soldiers and Marines to eat. But they do have a similar heating mechanism. 

Not as much protein as they should have, in my opinion, but not terrible as emergency rations. 

The Last Word on Moral Philosophy

"Waste no more time debating what is a good man: be one." 

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations X

Today I moved seven generators and an oven. Two of the places we could use a truck and a trailer to reach, including to a mule farm with very little need for electricity at all. One we could still reach with the trailer, but only detached from the truck and attached to a Polaris Ranger instead. It only carried two, so I rode in the trailer holding on to the generators as we bounced over the mud trail, secure in the knowledge that I had tied the rescue knots lashing them to the frame myself. The last one we had to reach with just the Ranger, so I had to deadlift the generators into it to ferry one by one. We left the third guy with the truck.

I spent a large part of my life studying philosophy, including moral philosophy. Indeed, it was moral philosophy that first caught my attention: I was greatly taken by Plato's dialogues, beginning with the Laches, in which we were all invited to participate in the ancient discussions about what it means to be good and virtuous. Plato invites everyone, but especially in his most famous middle dialogues makes it seem as if it's hard to come to an answer; in his later dialogues, like the Laws, he makes it seem clear but his answers are ludicrous. 

Aristotle developed an answer in the Nicomachean Ethics that was broadly satisfying for more than a thousand years. The Stoics refined and improved upon it, but their model of virtue is basically Aristotelian. 

Aristotle also provided the best scientific writing for many generations, but his scientific writings were proven inaccurate in many ways by the late Medievals and early Moderns. Thinking that his moral philosophy was also as flawed, modern thinkers have tried to either refound it on reason -- like Kant or Rawls -- or to replace it -- like Marx or Bentham. 

All of those projects have been as ridiculous as Plato in his late phase, which is not to scorn them: they were, like he was, operating at the top of humanity's intellectual capacity. Studying them likewise is not a useless endeavor, as it allows you to approach an understanding of how and why the later models were flawed. 

Ultimately, however, there are no secrets remaining in moral philosophy. There is no reason to hold a week-long seminar, or a three-day retreat, or a day-long debate. We know how to be good, how to be virtuous, and what we ought to do. If you don't know, you should know. 

The hard part is doing it. If a course in moral philosophy leads to men who worry over abstracts of 'justice' or 'right' or 'duty,' sitting in libraries or lecture halls, it has failed. If it leads to men who know how to tie rescue knots and tourniquets, and who stand ready to apply CPR or work a chainsaw to clear a road, it has succeeded. 

I guess I had good teachers, starting with my father who set the example for me. I came across Aristotle early and Marcus Aurelius late, but they were right all along.

More Ham Radio in North Carolina

As the video points out, in an emergency when life or property are at risk, anyone can use a ham radio.

Third Update

There's still no power, but at least for now some of the cellular towers are running. Coverage is unstable, as towers sometimes go back down again. For those with generators, internet access has reappeared in some places as the phone company's lines are mostly buried and were less heavily damaged. (The phone company technician's name is Joe. He's a good guy.)

As described before, the first 48 hours our operations were focused on opening the roads just enough to get to people in far flung homes. We helped a few families even while the storm was raging, especially those who had trees fall through their roof, but getting to them was the hard part at first. Every road was impassable, hundreds of trees were down across them.

By Friday morning the cellular networks were all down. 911 was also down. We had to go out to find the people who needed help. Cutting trees and throwing the pieces was most of what I did on Friday and Saturday. As we opened access to vulnerable people in the community, we brought them oxygen cylinders or generators to power life-saving equipment like oxygen concentrators. By Sunday we had a county saw team to help, and we mostly cleared the mountain roads up here by nightfall Sunday.

By Monday we could expand our sweeps from known vulnerable people and homes that had obvious physical damage to elderly citizens who might need extra help. Patrols dispatched multiple times a day in each of several directions went through different regions of the district, distributing water and food to the very old and those with young children.

The first law enforcement showed up Monday as well; up until then it had mostly been volunteer firefighters, technical rescuers like me, and the county groundskeepers who became our saw team. Two deputies appeared on Monday and returned Tuesday with some more. Today the Sheriff was here, as well as two members of the National Guard.

Starting yesterday we began an effort to contact everyone in the district, to distribute food, water, gasoline, and information about how to obtain further aid at a time when ordinary forms of communication are down.

Today I took a patrol out to Wolf Mountain and talked to every person who lives on it. It had several of the last "black" roads, places we had not been able to go to at all. I think we are very close to 100% accountability on citizens; so far, I'm not aware of anyone who has died in our district, neither from the storm nor from the aftermath without power or the ability to obtain food (or water, for those with well pumps but not generators). There are some missing still that we are searching for, however. My team found one yesterday, who had broken her hip, but she is ok and receiving treatment.

The communities up here have pulled together beautifully for the most part, and are supporting each other with minimal need for outside assistance. I'm proud of them.

Reports from North Carolina

A ham radio operator caught in the storm in Swannanoa, Buncombe County, NC, has posted reports and photos on his blog. He has solar and a satellite connection. It seems his community is cut off, but making do.

Aftermath - 9/28/2024

Long Update - 9/30/2024

The ham radio technician license exam is pretty easy, and the general license is only slightly more difficult. Technician gives you UHF and VHF privileges; a small handheld radio that can connect with a repeater can communicate around 50 miles. That license also gives you a slice of HF, the 10-meter band. An HF radio about the size of a CB radio can communicate worldwide in the right conditions. The general license opens up a great deal of the HF frequencies and much more flexible communications.

Rest in Peace, Kris Kristofferson

I was sad to hear, belatedly no doubt, of this great singer songwriter passing. There are tremendous stories about him; I don’t have time to relate. Look them up. They’re worth your while. 

Dawn over Cimmeria

Several shots from the same location at dawn, showing how the Smoky Mountains raise a fog with the first solar energy. Before dawn the stars were clear. 

The National Guard is supposed to be sending a squad up here today. We saw the first law enforcement officers yesterday, five days in to the business. The school system turned its fuel over to emergency services, so we are still running patrols to vulnerable families. Today we are planning a full sweep of the district to advise everyone of what aid is available and how to access it, as power, cellular towers, phones and internet remain down. 

UPDATE: The National Guard did not in fact appear; apparently a paperwork error at the State Capitol sent them somewhere else. No word on if that might get straightened out. 

One Way to Help

 When Kentucky was flooded a while back, the guys at Stocking Mill Coffee put together a 'strike team' of relief, and headed up and helped people out- no big NGO, no overhead, just dudes helping people who needed it.  They're at it again, and I trust them to put my dollars to good use up there.  The CEO is a vet and a "get it done" kind of guy, so the right man for the job.  They are targeting the area between Spartanburg and Ashville, and that seems like a good target zone for the operation.  I offer this as I know many here share my distrust of the big NGOs, and as I mentioned, I trust these guys.  Link to their donation site.

Second Update

Operations for the first day focused almost exclusively on clearing local roads enough for emergency access. This does not mean that the roads are clear: frequently just enough of a fallen treetop was cleared to allow a rescue vehicle to pass through one lane. Some twisty and forested roads were like mouse mazes, swerving from this lane to that to take the tunnel cut through the next tree. Many roads remained completely impenetrable after the first day. 

The second day we continued access operations on the remaining roads, and began health and welfare checks in earnest. Up here the populations are mountain people and vacation/second-home people. 

Most of the mountain people had cleared their own roads, or hadn’t bothered because they didn’t need a road. Mountain families have extensive home-canned food and usually gravity-fed spring water. They own chainsaws; a surprising number of them own excavators, and thus an even larger number have kin or neighbors who do. I met one lady without a spring who cans water, ensuring a secure supply of clean water even if the creek fouls. These people have only two problems: some have family members with mental health issues, and some have extreme elderly who need oxygen concentrators or other powered medical equipment. They need gasoline for the saws and equipment, eventually, but the ones who have to keep a generator going are coming to a very hard decision. They will, however, be fine: the worst they face is grief for the few they may lose. We are focusing our efforts on trying to spare them that grief. 

The second-home people are happy and prosperous, and depend on stable social organizations like stores that take credit cards. They don’t realize how bad things may get if a way to get fuel in here doesn’t arise soon; more on that later. Some of them cleared their own roads by the happy expedient of having hired a local family as caretaker or groundskeeper of their property, and in this way another large chunk of work got done by someone other than the rescue service. 

Everyone we checked on was fine, including the dubious tent-campers-in-a-hurricane “where the sheriff got shot.” (The sheriff got shot nigh a hundred years ago, but everyone here knows exactly where that location in the backcountry is better than they would understand an address.)

Day three, today, we switched to actual clearing operations on the roads. Most of them are clear, all of them where we are aware of anyone living. We also continued health and welfare checks until 1700 local time. 

Starting at that time and until further notice, we are restricted to emergency operations only. “The present emergency,” which really is an emergency and a catastrophe, doesn’t count. 

We are nearly out of gasoline, you see. Even the emergency services. Diesel we’ve got for the big trucks, but gasoline is now almost gone. When it’s gone most county vehicles stop, including ambulances and police cars. Those generators powering the oxygen concentrators stop too. 

I hope the people working on that part of the problem have had as productive a last three days as we have. A lot hangs on whether or not more gasoline appears. If it doesn’t, the mountain folk will grieve, and a lot of other folk will learn about how hard life can get. 

We’ve done what we can where we are. If they have too, maybe it’ll still work out. 

There’s a Chinook. That’ll be the 30th Armored Brigade of the National Guard. I was with them in Iraq for a while in 2009. It’s funny how much this has been like that: rise at first light, shave by candlelight, gather for a mission briefing followed by a dawn patrol from the base to carry out your several missions. I was enjoying it, surprisingly so. It was sort of like the good-parts version of war. I hope we get some gasoline, so we don’t get the bad parts. 

Hurricane Update

This is the first time I have been able to communicate since the hurricane hit Thursday night. The situation here is catastrophic. The hurricane dropped its load of water here in the mountains of North Carolina. All cellular towers are down. All power lines are down. I-40 is closed and so is I-26, eliminating the major ground lines of communication with eastern N, SC, and TN. Locally our county seat has no power or phones, although I have heard that 911 is back online for anyone who has a phone that can call them. No cellphones work, but some landlines do.

Our rescue operations are 24 hours a day currently. I can report steady progress; yesterday at dawn it took me five hours just to cut my way out with a chainsaw to reach the highway and the rally point. Today we have saw crews and a three man team from DOT with earth moving equipment to clear landslides. We have established a temporary shelter for the elderly until they can be moved to proper facilities, but our hospitals are overwhelmed-- one of them is closed, but yesterday all of them were.

This is going to take a while. Power restoration is estimated between 5 days and weeks, depending on who you consult. I have Internet while standing next to this one fire truck with a mobile Starlink system. Many people have generators, but fuel is an issue: with the interstates down supplies will dwindle, and the economy is cash only because credit card systems can't reach their banks. We are especially concerned about elderly on oxygen, supplies of which will also dwindle.

I will be in touch as I can be, but expect that to be limited especially at first. I have not heard anything about when cell towers will be back online. Once power is restored, I'll have Starlink from home. I haven't been at home much, though.

The community is pulling together in the best traditions of America. The support systems are heavily stressed, though.

"Let the hoarding begin"

The EU enacted a law intended to prevent members from buying all kinds of products without first requiring overseas suppliers to prove they weren't deforesting. It's not working out quite as hoped.

Well, I'm sure EU residents will be happy to do without. When I hear the EU anthem now I always fill in the lyrics in my head as "Schadenfreude."

Flying to Peril

I’m sitting at an airport bar in Dallas, waiting for a flight that will carry me to the outer bands of this hurricane. My fire/rescue district is dead center of the bad zone on this map. 

It’s been a pleasant two weeks, which looks likely to be followed by some interesting days. 

UPDATE: Through already-heavy rains, we made it home. We’re on station for what follows. 

UPDATE: We've had one land slip with downed trees and power lines so far; the rain has continued to be heavy, meaning that the earth is saturated with water and the heavy rains/winds to come will be more dangerous. The National Weather Service is being comforting.

This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era. Record flooding is forecasted and has been compared to the floods of 1916 in the Asheville area. The impacts from this event are expected to be greater than Tropical Storm Fred from August 2021, the mountains in 2004 from Frances and Ivan, and in Upstate South Carolina the Saluda River Basin flooding from 1949. 

We plead with everyone that you take every single weather warning very seriously through the entirety of this event as impacts will be life-threatening and make sure to have multiple ways to receive the alerts. The protection of life and property is the overall mission of the National Weather Service, and we pledge to stand by the folks of the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia. We cannot stress the significance of this event enough. Heed all evacuation orders from your local Emergency Managers and go to a storm shelter if you do not feel safe at your current location.  

Hurricane Helene will make landfall later this evening near the Big Bend of Florida. Significant to catastrophic, life-threatening flooding will occur along and near the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Historic flooding will be possible in this area as an additional 9-14" of rainfall will be in store. Many landslides will occur as a result, with a few large and severely damaging slope failures or debris flows are likely.  

Possible hurricane-force gusts in the North Carolina mountains, northeast Georgia, and the western portion of Upstate South Carolina. 60-70 mph wind gusts possible elsewhere. The combination of strong winds and super saturated soils will lead to widespread trees down and numerous power outages. 

The day has been spent in preparation, and I suppose we are as ready as we can be. Any of you who happen to be local to this region, batten down the hatches. It should be over by tomorrow evening, and then we'll start figuring out how hard it will be to put things right.

American Wildlife Museum

One of the best things about Jackson Hole is the national wildlife art museum. I highly recommend it if you’re ever out there. 

Note to Frank in IF

Thank you again for the kind invitation. It turns out that my mother, my sister, and my wife fully planned my weekend for me, and I had no leeway for a trip. 

My mother volunteered me to tie a knot board for the local community, the sort of thing that rescuers and Boy Scouts use to learn knots. Here it is in progress. 

My sister planned a lengthy hike near Teton Canyon, as well as a dinner I was to cook for friends and family. 

And my wife planned yesterday’s expedition to Dubois. 

So my life was quite completely ordered by the women, which I am told is the best thing for men. I am sorry that I didn’t have time to get out your way. Thank you for the asking. 

But it's OUR immunity

This is the kind of immunity people should be worried about.

Dubois Rhymes with Cowboys

Today we visited the extremely scenic town of Dubois, Wyoming. It is located on the western edge of Wyoming’s badlands, so that if you ascend the ridge by the town cemetery you will be able to look West upon a mighty gap with ascending trees, or East upon a barren land of colored and banded hills. Look either way, or any way, and you will face stern and glorious beauty. 

Mrs. Grim photographs the scenery.

The town itself is less glorious. It does have an Old West charm, a general store that plausibly claims Butch Cassidy as a former customer, at least one good restaurant called the Cowboy Cafe (est. 1937), and two bars. 

Schrödinger's Rental Car

I had hoped to post some nice photos for you today, as a complement to Grim's travel pics. However, apparently reserving a rental car in advance no longer guarantees that there will be a real car waiting for you at the appointed time and place. Some of you, maybe all, probably knew that but I discovered it yesterday. I had reserved a car two days in advance and, in the past, I'd always been able to rely on my reservation.

(Below the fold you may find the rest of this rather pedestrian story explaining why you may or may not ever get a rental car again, along with comments on Schrödinger's thought experiment and even a dramatic suggestion.)

Mesa Falls

Regular commenter Thos. and I met for lunch the last time I was out this way, and he suggested that I go to Mesa Falls. I didn’t have time last year, but this trip we got out there. It’s a beautiful volcanic area with a healthy river, Henry’s Fork, that is heavily aerated by the falls. It is therefore rich with life, including fish and the bears that prey on them (the land below is called “Bear Gulch”).

It’s got an upper and lower waterfall, the upper one being less tall but more beautiful. 

Thank you for the recommendation, Thos.

Jews awake

In my old firm, adding my colleagues' identity as lawyers to their predominantly being Jews and New Yorkers meant a triple whammy for their political alignment. They were intensely capitalist but almost uniformly Democrats.

For years I've wondered if the increasingly obvious anti-Semitism on the left would push them into the arms of the GOP or even--gasp--Trump. After October 7, 2023, I watched even more closely. It seems the moment may have arrived at last.

1 Cor. 13:13

A friend's grandson was just born perilously early, at only 20-21 weeks, as they believed. When early labor commenced a couple of weeks ago, they tried to suspend it ith drugs and by the almost desperate tactic of sewing the cervix shut. In this way they managed to buy about six more days before the mother began hemorrhaging and had to be delivered, but in the meantime they got some steroids into the baby and lots of magnesium into the mother. The family then prepared for the worst, because there was little reason to believe the baby could survive birth.

Whether from pure mercy and good fortune, or the good effects of the steroids and magnesium, or because the gestational age had been misestimated and the baby was really more like 23-24 weeks along, the little guy began breathing, had an APGAR of 6, and has been doing surprisingly well for over a week now. He is taking a little milk and has suffered only a couple of concerning episodes which so far seem to have responded well to treatment. He's tiny, closer to 1-1/2 lbs. than 2, but hanging in there.

At one of the pre-birth crises, when both mother and child were in danger and rapid decisions had to be made in the operating room, the mother called out for quiet. She said she had to do something to calm down and be able to make decisions. The anesthesiologist backed her up and called for quiet in the room. Mom said she wasn't sure whether she needed to pray or to sing, so she began singing "Jesus Loves Me." Immediately the anesthesiologist joined in, and then so did the rest of the staff.

Perhaps many medical teams would have been flummoxed and exasperated by this non-medical interlude. It took kindness, faith, and courage for them all to recognize the mother's need and remind themselves to ask God for help in a moment of such abject grief and fear.

Early in the ordeal, the medical staff leaned toward terminating the pregnancy, believing that the fetus was hopeless and the mother was in unreasonable danger. The parents firmly told them to pull out all the stops to save their son. They had already lost their first pregnancy at an earlier stage, only nine months ago. They are strong young people.

The Big Holes

This year I stuck to the ridges instead of the lush canyons, and consequently saw little wildlife but vast landscapes. 

Elementary Arithmetic

Mom is chaperoning a trip to the Grand Tetons National Park for my niece’s school tomorrow. As a reward, the children of families who chaperone got to choose the groups. 

So tonight mom was complaining to another mom that Clio had made her life difficult by choosing a group of five with TWO boys in it, boys being unruly compared to little girls. 

“I did not!” my niece exclaimed. 

“You didn’t?”

“No,” said my niece. “I chose FOUR boys.”

The Yellowstone, Day II

We spent the morning in the northern section of the park, crossing Dunraven Pass a little after noon. 

The Yellowstone, Day I

Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, from Artist’s Point.

Leaving Eden

I've just thoroughly enjoyed a 2018 book by an author new to me, "Against the Grain" by James C. Scott. The author challenges the assumption that the great civilizations that sprang up after the dawn of agriculture improved things for anyone. Without romanticizing the hunter-gatherer life, he reports solid evidence bearing on the severe disadvantages of sedentary agriculture, and explores the considerable changes (including genetic) it wrought on the human race. He argues that sedentary agriculture succeeded for millenia before agrarian states arose. He draws a parallel between tax-collecting states and the surrounding barbarian civilizations engaged in what must be recognized as a protection racket. Both treated the farmers essentially as domesticated livestock and extracted as much as possible of the excess food they produce via the momentous replacement of hunter-gathering with sedentary cultivation.

Scott's prose is a pleasure. There is no tiresome hectoring against colleagues who might dispute his revisionism. He organizes his thinking clearly and makes a sustained argument with solid evidence and logic--something that shouldn't be rare in academic literature but sadly is. I'm off to read some of his other books, including one on anarchy, a subject he obviously has grappled hard with. It's no easy thing to construct a society that restrains people from seizing the results of other people's labor by force, rather than requiring us all to proceed by some form of consent.

Tetonia

Two of the three businesses are bars. 

Prophecy versus Psychological Warfare in Dune 2

On the long flight out here, I had time to watch Dune Part II. It’s different from the book in a number of conceptual respects. Most of these are predictable refusals by contemporary writers to honor the vision of their ancestor (and benefactor) where it defies their own ideals. The young are shockingly alienated from all human history. 

One place where an interesting dialogue develops, though, is in the film’s criticism of the Bene Gesserit. It’s interesting that the current generation would criticize the Bene Gesserit, since it represents a successful feminine wrenching of power from the male structures: the Emperor is really mastered by them, and the Guild hates them because it recognizes their power over the mental magics of the Spice. They successfully prevent the generation of a male who can do and be what Paul is for generations by controlling reproduction, seduction, bloodlines. 

But they do commit one sin against the mode of the young, and that is colonialism. They wage sexual war against all men, the Guild, the Emperor, and the Great Houses: well enough. But they also tell stories to the Fremen, and others, to colonize their minds. That’s where the film really gets sideways with them: colonizing a third world minority group to establish psychic control over them. 

There’s a subplot unique to the film in which worldly Northerners (Fremen!) reject the superstitions and fundamentalist religious beliefs of the Southerners (still Fremen!). The Southerners are totally captured by these religious forces, which the Northerners doubt. The conquest of Paul and Jessica of the minds of the Fremen is treated as a kind of hostile, manipulative psychological war. 

Yet it is also a prophecy, one that comes true at important moments in ways not in human control. Yes, Paul ‘knows the ways of the desert’ because worldly feminist Chani teaches him (‘we are equals, male and female,’ she says while submitting to Fremen social roles that silence women in sacred places). But Paul really does summon the Grandfather Worm, and rides him; you can make up a story about that, and tell it for generations, but ultimately it is up to the worm if he comes. 

It ends up leaving a question about how much of these Bene Gesserit tales were psychological warfare and how much were true prophecy. That is the road by which the divine gets in: however much the stories were lies, were colonialist modes of control, were wiles aimed at mastery, somehow the truth got in. Somehow, in spite of all attempts at manipulation and mastery, the tales were true for the Fremen after all. 

Up the Teton Canyon

I really enjoyed this hike last year, and this year my wife was able to come along. It was a beautiful day and a fine hike — praise the day at evening— and we had a wonderful time together. 

Facing into the canyon from above, you can see the peaks that you will be slowly approaching.

A panoramic view of the canyon from the junction with the Alaska Basin trail.

For Mike G.

The elk antler arches now stand at all four corners of the Jackson city square. A brass plaque explains that the antlers are collected after the shed by the local Boy Scouts, with many additional ones auctioned off for charity. 

One arch on the right, opposite the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. Hank Williams, Jr. played there not long ago, and it has many artifacts from the great years of Outlaw Country as well as the Old West.

Another arch from inside the square. Today there was a busker playing Waylon Jennings outside it, which drew a donation from me.

LR1’s Fiction

In the comments below, longtime community member LittleRed1 offers access to stories. LR1 writes:

The series titles are tabs from the home page. History-based fantasy includes the Merchant series, which has been called "blue collar fantasy." The Familiars books are urban fantasy, Colplatschki is military sci-fi, and the Shikari series is "Kipling in space." ...

"Blackbird" in the Colplatschki series, and "The Lone Hunter" (Familiar Generations 1) are about heroic gentlemen (or "eventually become gentlemen") who are not perfect, but do their best.

Freedom

Wyoming. 

Scenes from Skyrim

Playing by Jenny Lake:

Bull Moose

UPDATE: Deer as well. 

Jackson Hole

Freegrazers

A fair amount of land out here is open range, and even when it’s not the law often protects freegrazers. These cattle on my sister and brother-in-laws acres are elements of two different herds that have wandered onto their land, jumping or pushing down fences as convenient to cattle. The owners know they’re wandering, but it’s apparently not a big deal here. 

I asked if they were allowed to lay claim to one as payment for eating their grass, but apparently that is a big deal. Rustling, I guess. 

UPDATE:

The Church Rocket War

Another religious custom I learned about today is the Easter rocket “war” on Chios. I learned about it because my mother is doing Friday homeschooling of my niece, due to the local school system going to a four-day week. She was going to teach a unit today on Greece because one of the neighborhood families is moving there; but being opposed to all forms of danger or risk, my mother was horrified by the inclusion of this subject in a children’s book. 

I was correspondingly delighted. It looks like a great time. 

The Laws of the Beautiful Captive

Because of the war, I’ve been paying attention to goings on in Israel. Thus I know what I would not normally know, that it is the holy month of the new year there, and that today’s Sabbath reading includes something called “the laws of the beautiful captive.”

I hadn’t heard of this, but it derives from an episode in Deuteronomy. Islam has a similar but much less kindly set of laws for women taken in war. The Greeks of the Homeric period exercised similar conduct, but with no clear restrictions; probably both of the religious standards represented a positive improvement in the treatment of captive women. 

Men, of course, were always killed in the bitter wars; or subjected to unrestricted slavery in the less bitter ones.

The rabbis who formalized the Torah apparently found the laws already uncomfortable, and suggest that they are a concession to the hardness of human nature. Interestingly to me, the Jewish article I cited above ends with a reflection on how the rabbinical commentary compares to the teaching of Jesus on divorce. 

A Rainy Day in Teton Valley

Reportedly there were bears about, but the horses and mule were so relaxed I knew that was old news. I did see a moose yesterday.

UPDATE:

The pot of gold appears to be right in front of the tire shop in Driggs, Idaho. 

More on Fantasy Fiction

The flip side of humanized orca is no real heroes. 

In my childhood, the nihilism that seems to be so common today wasn’t really a thing. We had grand adventures with heroes who might not have been perfect but were still heroes.

Today, we have a lot of fiction where no one is really the good guy. Rings of Power has been trying to humanize the orcs, making all the good races of Middle Earth darker than they were. Game of Thrones saw just about every truly heroic character killed while so many of the despicable characters lasted until the end.

To the West

I will be traveling to visit my family in the Tetons for the next two weeks. Hopefully I will have interesting experiences there. 

DOJ: Don't Be Removing those Fake Voters, Now

People in several states are cleaning up the voter rolls. In Georgia, fake names get added back in almost as soon as they're cleared out the first time.

After engineer and data scientist Kim Brooks worked on cleaning the voter rolls in Georgia for a year, she realized she was on a stationary bicycle. She’d clear a name for various reasons, dead, felon, stolen ID, living at a seasonal campground for twenty years, duplicate, moved out of state, 200 years old, etc., and back it would come within a month. At that juncture she realized that a program within the Georgia voter registration database was methodically adding back fake names.

She looked deeper. For new registrants, the culprit was principally Driver’s Services creating new registrations and in this case, the manufacturer was a person, or persons. Within the government office, someone was stealing names and duplicating, even tripling that person’s vote and then forging their signature.

The DOJ says such states had better be careful, and stop well before the election.

The Justice Department issued a warning to states Monday to tread lightly in trying to clean up their election systems of bogus names and ineligible voters, firing a shot across the bow of GOP-led states that have been trying to erase noncitizens from their rolls.... the department said federal law allows states to clean their rolls, but it must be done within strict guidelines and only for approved reasons such as a voter has moved out of the jurisdiction, has died or has requested removal.

Someone who has been inactive can be removed only after being notified and failing to show up for two more federal elections.

Changes cannot be made too close to an election.

All the way at the end of the article, you get an appreciation of the scale.

Voting rights groups argue that noncitizen voting is rare.

Republican state officials, though, say they’re finding plenty of evidence noncitizens have signed up.

Virginia said it removed 6,303 names of noncitizens from its rolls.

Texas, meanwhile, says it has culled 6,500 “potential noncitizens” from its rolls since 2021. That’s part of a broader purge of 1.1 million names, including 457,000 dead people, 463,000 inactive people, 65,000 who didn’t respond to notices and 134,000 who said they had moved.

Of the noncitizens, Texas said 1,930 had voted in elections before.

Two thousand in an election of millions is not a big deal, probably; but half a million dead people and half a million inactive names is a big deal when it's now standard practice to send out tons of mail-in ballots, and accept them without signature matching when they return. 

Requiescat in Pace Thulsa Doom

The great actor James Earl Jones, whose most famous role was probably not Thulsa Doom, has died at 93 years of age. The role, though not the character's name, did make the obituary. 

Jones married the actor Celia Hart in 1982, the same year he starred opposite budding action star Arnold Schwarzenegger as an evil sorcerer in “Conan the Barbarian.”

Thank you for everything. 

UPDATE: 

What Job Do You Think You Are Training For?

The nearby city of Waynesville's police chief is appealing the suspension of his police training and certification program.

Waynesville Police Chief David Adams had all of his law enforcement instructor certifications suspended by the North Carolina Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission.... Adams was an instructor at Blue Ridge Community College’s Basic Law Enforcement program in Henderson County, where he’s originally from and where he cut his teeth as a young police officer. That program came under fire earlier this year when an investigation that began last year determined that “physical and verbal abuse” was inflicted on trainees by instructors, and some trainees even suffered injuries.

Abuse, you say?

A video obtained by the television news station WLOS depicts a session where trainees are learning how to apprehend a combative suspect using a variety of blocks and strikes, including with a simulation baton. The video shows instructors who are role playing as belligerent suspects striking trainees. When one trainee’s helmet is knocked off, an instructor hits the trainee as he turns around with what is described in the corresponding article as “basically a sucker punch.”

Fortunately, even the most roguish of our local citizens would certainly never take advantage of a police officer whose personal protection equipment became disabled in such a manner. Even during a spirited exchange of ideas, their robust commitment to fair play is well known by all. No wonder this sort of training seemed unacceptable to the commissioners! 

I can't guarantee that the same spirit of sportsmanship will hold for the cartels who have moved into some of the local areas with the mass immigration of late, however. There's just a chance that, if your helmet were to be knocked off in a clash, you might benefit from being trained to watch out for a 'sucker punch.' 

Surely as the great American melting pot takes hold of these newcomers, they too will come to understand that a friendly neighborhood brawl is no place for such things! In the meantime, however, would-be policemen might benefit from the instruction.

On the Importance of Orcs

Orcs are evil and twisted to the core, aren't they?

Modern entertainment is creatively bankrupted, uninspired, or even just plain morally skewed. What that says about the minds behind these shows, movies, and books, I’ll leave for you to decide. What I want to speak on is a simple topic: orcs.

Yes, you read that right, I want to talk about orcs. Specifically, orcs who are just trying to provide for their families. Recently, The Rings of Power has once again been making headlines, this time for testing the waters with sympathetic orcs. To any hardcore and/or longtime Tolkien fans, this notion sounds ludicrous, but it is about what we can expect from modern Hollywood. 

It's not just Amazon's troubled billion-dollar rethinking of Tolkien. Dungeons & Dragons also has decided that it's just problematic if there are "evil races," so they've gotten rid of both the evil and the 'race' (now "species").

“Throughout the 50-year history of D&D, some of the peoples in the game — orcs and drow (dark elves) being two of the prime examples — have been characterized as monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated,” Wizards said in a statement. “That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in.”

The company says the current version of the RPG, known as 5th Edition, was designed to include a wide range of ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations and beliefs.

Oh, it does do that. Rather than looking like the Fellowship of the Ring, already diverse with a maia, humans, an elf, a dwarf, and several hobbits, a modern D&D party is going to be a collection of sea monsters, vampires, half-devils, half-dragons, half-gods, genies, hobgoblins, minotaurs, and yes, orcs. And many more! 

None of them are evil, though. Not by nature. Not even the ones born of devils in Hell itself, nor the vampires that subsist on blood alone.

Defenders would doubtless say that this is a more morally sophisticated universe, and perhaps note that even Darth Vader proved redeemable. So many shades of grey, so few Gandalfs. 

All Things Beowulf

Speaking of poetics, AVI has reposted a playful version of Beowulf (or at least Scyld Scefing) going to the coffee shop.

Ode to the BLT

A poem.

The sentiment reminds me of a clip I saw about a family whose tomatoes have typically come from a regular grocery store getting some real ones.

UPDATE:

The sentiment of the poem caused me to make BLTs for my wife's lunch.

Voters More Socially Liberal

Reason offers evidence that Trump voters were less racist than Romney voters, even though they were mostly the same people.

Ohio State political scientist Thomas Wood tried in 2017 to measure the relationship between Americans' presidential votes and how they scored on the "symbolic racism" or "racial resentment" scale, which Wood described as a way to uncover "racial attitudes among respondents who know that it's socially unacceptable to say things perceived as racially prejudiced."

This scale is controversial, because some of the statements it asks people to evaluate—such as "Over the past few years blacks have gotten less than they deserve"—could elicit the "wrong" answer for reasons unrelated to prejudice or resentment. The underlying problem was highlighted when surveys found substantial numbers of African Americans endorsing the purportedly racist positions, leading some social scientists to call for giving the measurement a less loaded label. At best, the scale measures whether people attribute racial disparities to structural barriers or individual failings.

But whether or not the people who score higher on the scale are racists, it seems fair to say that the people who score lower on the scale are racial liberals. So what did Wood find?

For Wood, the big takeaway was that "we've never seen such a clear correspondence between vote choice and racial perceptions" in three decades of these surveys: The higher you landed in the scale, the more likely you were to vote Republican. But as Musa al-Gharbi pointed out in a critique of Wood's work for The American Sociologist, this ignored the direction those Republicans were moving in. According to Wood's own data, al-Gharbi noted, whites who backed Trump over Hillary Clinton were "less racist than those who voted for [Mitt] Romney. The same holds among whites who voted for Clinton as compared to those who voted for [Barack] Obama." Again, voters in both parties were getting more racially liberal; it's just that Democrats went further.

Trump voters were also more tolerant than earlier Republican voters of gays, lesbians, and pretty much all the social liberal things. America has just been moving in that direction, they suggest. Reason writers and editors are libertarian, of course, so for them that's an almost unmitigated good thing. "Time and again, once-vivid fights have receded, as with same-sex unions, or disappeared almost entirely, as with interracial marriage."

Interesting debate question: ‘Are you less racist than you were four years ago?’