More tales from the floodplain

 

A sliver of the Texan99 intermittent pond at flood stage.  In a very dry year that's prairie all the way across.  The surface area right now is probably 3 acres, but it's shallow at this end.  That's good, because the gators like to stay in the deeper part off the left, near the road.

The sidewalk in the lower right corner adjoins our downstairs porch at ground level; this picture was taken from the upstairs porch on the living-floor level.  Because the perspective is flattened, you can't see that the water would have to rise another foot or two to hit the sidewalk.  Even with another 3+ inches last night, the pond level seems stable.  Rain is in the forecast for another couple of days, but maybe not as extreme as it has been all this week.

Although my laptop arrived apparently unscathed on Tuesday, it did develop an alarming internal clicking noise after some lightning yesterday.  It's old enough to be out of warranty and beyond the maximum coverage of Apple's tech support contract, so I decided to take the plunge and order a new one.  Apple amused me by promising delivery today, a prospect I declined to take seriously, but we'll see!  Roads are closed all over the coastal region today.  Nevertheless, the trucks can drive through some pretty high water, so as long as the sorting facilities are operating, they may work miracles, depending on where the laptop is coming from.  I was actually surprised not to be told there would be a long wait on delivery, as I'd been hearing that anything with a chip in it was a problem.  Must have been in stock somewhere.

Our septic field is underwater, never an ideal condition, but it's so situated that it doesn't drain either to the house or to the pond, and it probably will be fine in a few days once the rain stops.  Nothing really fazes a septic system as long as solids don't get into the tiny perforations in the leachfield pipes; I understand that if those get plugged up, you just abandon those pipes and lay in a new drainfield.  This experience highlights the wisdom of the rules requiring so many feet of distance between the field and either the house or the pond.  Septic tanks are more environmentally defensible than almost any municipal system, as long as you can ensure that, when flooded, they don't start draining into a public waterway.

Fatherless

I missed this when it was new in December, but it remains relevant. That fatherlessness is a root cause of all sorts of harm is well known; but this author, Mary Eberstadt, expands in a powerful way.

The explosive events of 2020 are but the latest eruption along a fault line running through our already unstable lives. That eruption exposes the threefold crisis of filial attachment that has beset the Western world for more than half a century. Deprived of father, Father, and patria, a critical mass of humanity has become socially dysfunctional on a scale not seen before.

This unified theory of Fatherlessness is more useful than the one that focused on the individual human father alone.  

From First Things, which in its current print edition has an interesting piece on demons. The Grey Mouser would approve of such attention to demonology. 

High water

We've had almost 17 inches of rain in the last 2-3 days.  We're very flat and coastal, so the good news is that the water rises slowly and can't carry anyone away, but the bad news is that it simply rises and stays there a long time, because there's not much of a gradient for it to drain off onto.  Luckily we're not dealing with a storm surge. 

There are a couple of acres of pond next to our house.  The pond level seems to be just about topped off, as there's reasonable drainage across our road through a ditch that eventually empties into the nearest bay.  The culvert at the road gets maxxed out if the rain comes down too intensely, as it has been doing--that incredible tropical downpour that seems like buckets emptying over your head--but the worst we've had to deal with is water deep enough to accommodate fish over our driveway.  Our house is up on stilts; even the ground floor, which is a garage,  appears to be in no danger of taking on water.  I wish I could say the same for all of the homes in the county.  We have homes set at elevations not more than a few feet above sea level.  My foundation is at 17 feet, which is like a mountain around here, and then our living areas are on stilts a full floor above that.

There are fish and turtle and alligators and water birds all over the streets and ditches.

Midnight Basketball for the Sedentary Generation

The NYPD has a hot new idea to lower spiking crime rates: traveling video game trailers. 

Transportation Difficulties

So the other day the Ford's engine suddenly lost power, and the speedometer stopped working. I nursed it back home and researched the problem. It could be several things. but is probably that the onboard computer went out. I can put in a new one (or maybe even one out of a junkyard) and reprogram it, I learned, with a laptop-linked FORScan system. So I went to town in my Jeep to get one.

On the way to town, the Jeep's clutch suddenly blew out. Probably just a hydraulic line, but it couldn't shift gears and was quickly unable to continue. So I had it towed to a shop for repairs, arranged a ride home, and now have two vehicles down.

Of course I have motorcycles, so I'm not stranded. Still, after the holiday's quiet I suddenly find myself thrust back into the world of difficulties. It is what it is. 

No service

I'm slowly learning to use an iPad instead of a laptop, but it ain't easy. I foolishly left my laptop behind in my hotel last Thursday at the end of a trip to South Padre for required annual Commissioner training hours. I spent the first day and a half trying to get movement out of somnolent hotel employees who don't seem quite to grasp the potential for tips--it's safer to live on salary and go by the book. When I finally got my laptop into the hands of FedEx Friday afternoon, the fun really started. It was supposed to go by overnight, guaranteed delivery by 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, but for some reason they put it on a plane to Memphis, where it sat for many hours. Then it went to Ft. Worth, then to San Antonio early Sunday morning. The holiday weekend shut it all down, so there it remains. In theory it will go to Corpus Christi tomorrow morning (Tuesday) and be trucked out to my house sometime later. All this for a four-hour drive from South Texas to Rockport.

I'm old enough to remember when FedEx gave pretty good service. I think I might actually have done better with the U.S. mail on this one.

You’re a Chancellor, not a GIF!

We have to train ourselves not to roll our eyes.

Chilling Out After the Fireworks

Independence Day Images

The Veterans' Exempt flag is hard to hang because the canton needs to go the same way as it would on an American flag, but that puts it out of order with all the other flags. The American flag is hung at its own right, with its canton on its own right. 

David Mann, 1990 Centerfold 

Reprise in Full

Originally from 2015, but worth reposting this year.

THE SPIRIT OF REBELLION

Happy Independence Day.  Today we celebrate treason, treason that prospered, treason that flourished, treason that created what was for a while -- what might someday be again -- the living symbol of virtuous human liberty.

This nation came out of a long tradition of beneficial treason, good treason, treason in the name of the best of the human condition.  It was born of the tradition that fought King John at Runnymede and compelled from him the Great Charter of Liberties, Magna Carta Libertatum.  It is out of the tradition that produced the Declaration of Arbroath in Scotland, in defiance of yet another tyrannical English king, which stated that "It is not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom — for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."  The Scottish national motto was Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, which means, "No One Touches Me With Impunity," or if you like, "No One Messes With Me Without Getting Hurt."  That sentiment was also given in Scotland, as later in Alabama, in the words of John 20:17:  Noli Me Tangere, usually translated "Touch Me Not," but also:

The values of this new nation are rooted in the principle of rebellion against authority.  They are the values of a people who do what they think is right, and will hand you your heads if you try to force them to kneel to your judgment instead of their own.  The Founders considered the philosophy of the Greeks.  They considered the history of the Romans.  They took stock of their reflections on the righteous judgment of God.  Then they pledged their fortunes and their lives, and their sacred honor, and did what they had decided was right without fear.

Today we celebrate men who fought underneath the American flag, but we celebrate them with the certain knowledge that the defiance -- the spirit of rebellion against any authority that transgresses its due  and proper limits -- that the defiance of tyranny is the real thing to be celebrated.  It is not the accidents but the essence of the American revolution that deserves our devotion.  

That goes for this and for all administrations, all branches of government, all foreign tyrants and all wicked powers.  

It may seem as if Americans are not still made of that stuff.  The flag I started with is the flag of the old Veterans Exempt, a militia that fought in the War of 1812 even though it was made up of veterans of the American Revolution who were too old to be drafted.  The last two images are from contemporary veterans' groups.  I've seen each of them posted online in the last few days.  

The right people should rejoice.  The wrong should beware.  You know who you are.  You know where you stand. 

Happy Independence Day.

Most Wonderful Time of the Year

 

Beware Old Glory

People might think you're a Republican or something. 

Only fools yield symbols as powerful as that to their enemies. That point is obvious enough that even the NYT is getting it. 

At its 1777 inception, the flag’s very design signified unity, the joining of the 13 colonies, said John R. Vile, a professor of political science and a dean at Middle Tennessee State University.

Politicizing the American flag is thus a perversion of its original intent, according to Professor Vile, who is also the author of “The American Flag: An Encyclopedia of the Stars and Stripes In U.S. History, Culture and Law.” He added, “We can’t allow that to happen.”

So don't. 

Standard American

The band is new to me, but they've got a respectable name: "Gunnar and the Grizzly Boys." 

What interests me about this song is not that it valorizes the usual kinds of Americans -- truck drivers, firefighters, blue collar mechanics, veterans, etc. -- but that it valorizes older men. The band is young, but everyone they portray as their models are at least middle aged. Vietnam Veterans are in their 70s now. 

That is very sensible and healthy, but it's out of order with our society as it has been really since the Vietnam Veterans were young. How does a young man learn how to be a good man? Naturally, they should look to the old men who were. 

Boys Having Fun

You've all heard this song a million times, as have I. That said, the video they apparently filmed back when they were first performing it is new to me. The first nearly two minutes isn't that interesting -- just performance of the piece -- but after that you get some great footage. 

Riding motorcycles! Jumping motorcycles! Wheelies! Riding horses! Fast cars! Blowguns! The American flag!

Pretty good entry to the Fourth of July weekend. 

A Mousetrap in the Twenty-First Century

The invention of the mousetrap does not date from our days; as soon as societies, in forming, had invented any kind of police, that police invented mousetraps.

As perhaps our readers are not familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jerusalem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied this word for the first time to this thing, allow us to explain to them what is a mousetrap.

When in a house, of whatever kind it may be, an individual suspected of any crime is arrested, the arrest is held secret. Four or five men are placed in ambuscade in the first room. The door is opened to all who knock. It is closed after them, and they are arrested; so that at the end of two or three days they have in their power almost all the HABITUES of the establishment. And that is a mousetrap.

The apartment of M. Bonacieux, then, became a mousetrap; and whoever appeared there was taken and interrogated by the cardinal’s people. It must be observed that as a separate passage led to the first floor, in which d’Artagnan lodged, those who called on him were exempted from this detention.

-Alexander Dumas, Père, The Three Musketeers

To whit.

Catholic Churches Burning in Canada

A rash of church burnings in Canada continues with the destruction of another church in Edmonton. 

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, previously told CBC News there are "mixed emotions" about the Catholic Church among Penticton Indian Band members.

Phillip said some members of the community have "an intense hatred for the Catholic Church in regard to the residential school experience."

What they're talking about is the recent discovery of 751 graves of children located at government-funded boarding schools, which were largely staffed by nuns and priests. The story is being told in Canada (and in the United States in certain circles) that this was a kind of Catholic colonialism and genocide against Native Americans. 

“This was a crime against humanity, an assault on a First Nation people,” said Chief Bobby Cameron, of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, the provincial federation of Indigenous groups. “The only crime we ever committed as children was being born Indigenous,” he said.... A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 2008 to investigate the residential schools, called the practice “cultural genocide.” 

However, undermining that narrative is the fact that there is an exactly parallel story in Ireland. There, the issue is just said to be that there were high levels of child mortality in the early 20th century. 

The discovery confirms decades of suspicions that the vast majority of children who died at the home were interred on the site in unmarked graves, a common practice at such Catholic-run facilities amid high child mortality rates in early 20th-century Ireland.

Naturally, the Biden administration is rushing to investigate American-based schools from the same period to see if any more bodies can be found. Expect this to be a productive field of inquiry since it hits all the right notes: anti-American, anti-Catholic/Christian, with just the right tone of oppression, allegations of racism, and colonialism.

UPDATE: Another reason this narrative has legs: the Chinese government is pushing it as a hedge against its own current practice of actual genocide against the Uighur and cultural genocide against the Tibetans. 

Excess Deaths Among the Young

A subject we've discussed occasionally is the topic of a Bloomberg article. 

Musical Sophistication

Recently under discussion, here are some examples from the 1930s and 1940s of music that is more complex than what you are likely to hear today. 

It might be difficult to say if these are more or less sophisticated than the medieval styles; that probably requires a lot of theoretical framework that I do not have in place. If long-time commenter Piercello happens to be around, he can perhaps provide some of that: it is in his area of expertise. 

FBI Violating Constitutional Rights of "Domestic Extremists" Since Election

Trump was still president when they started routinely violating the Constitution in pursuit of his supporters. 

[T]he FBI has continued to perform warrantless searches through the NSA's most sensitive databases for routine criminal investigations, despite being told by a federal judge in 2018 and 2019 that such a use was an unconstitutional breach of privacy.  

The FBI focused many of its warrantless searches - commonly referred to as backdoor queries - on suspected 'far-right' domestic terrorists, The Daily Beast reported.  

It's unclear from the heavily-redacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court report whether the FBI uncovered any criminal extremist behavior or made any arrests resulting from the searches.  

UPDATE: Microsoft executive testifies that they provide clandestine surveillance of Americans to the FBI without a warrant thousands of times a year.  

The Ride

Asheville was perfectly pleasant today. I saw three cops, or one and a half percent of the remaining force, all hanging out together near downtown. 

But man, what a ride today. 

That was from the way home. I’d have taken a photo on the way in, but it would have just looked like the inside of a cloud.