Hello, Zoo

It looks like our San Diego sojourn is going to be cut short since my back went wonkers this week.  At least we managed to see the most iconic attraction this city has to offer:  The San Diego Zoo.  This is actually the second time I've been to the zoo.  In 1980 some close friends moved to Orange County (an urban area just south of Los Angeles), and one of the things we did during our visit out to California to see them was a road trip to the San Diego Zoo.

I think 'road trip' doesn't EXACTLY convey a car trip which included a three year old as well as his older brother who was under pressure to learn the multiplication tables.  The older brother was not thrilled at the idea of the memorization of something which he had concluded could just as easily be accomplished by using a calculator.  He was very resistant, and as it turns out, prescient.  (If someone asks you today what 9x7 is, a shocking number of us would just open the iphone calculator function for the answer.)

What I mainly remember is how big the zoo was, and by the end of the day in 1980 I was envying the three year old's option to ride in his stroller rather than walk.  Fast forward thirty seven years and the biggest difference from then to now was how people get around the park. There are now three varieties of 'people movers' used throughout the zoo.  First, you can take a 'bus tour' of the zoo.  Think Grayline doubledecker open air buses rolling around the entire zoo.  This is a 'tour', and there is non-stop commentary as well as photo opportunities. You stay on the bus, but you can stand up, move to the other side and so forth to take pictures.  That's how I got the shot of this polar bear.

Polar bear hair follicles are actually tubes, and in San Diego, their fur is 'green' because
algae is growing inside the hair follicles

The second form of transportation is the Kangaroo Trolley.  There are several 'stops' throughout the zoo, and you hop on and hop off at the stops just like a kangaroo.  Finally, you can take a gondola all the way across the zoo and back.  Even with better transportation, the zoo resembles a maze.  The zoo management cleverly scattered zoo volunteers all over the place to help out with directions.  Part of the difficulty in getting around is the fault of the zoo map.  The map is mostly a cartoon map with pictures of animals to show where they are.  Also, this is a patchwork quilt of a place since many enclosures have been 'added' on or 'remodeled', and getting from Animal A to Animal B is rarely a straight shot.

We planned our trip to the zoo like it was a military campaign.  First, we wanted to go when all the elementary aged rug rats were back in school.  Second, we wanted a cloudy, cool day. From past zoo experiences, we knew the animals would be more active if the day was cool and overcast.  And, that's what we did.  On the day we visited, there was a mixture of the toddler crowd with the oldster tourists like us.  It was pretty uncrowded, so we really enjoyed seeing everything. 

My favorite part of the zoo were the two aviaries.  I love aviaries.  In this zoo there were bird feeders everywhere.  I actually saw a Hammerkop catch and eat a fish out of a little 'stream' running through one of the aviaries!  I was buzzed so closely by Metallic Starlings heading to a feeder, that my hair ruffled The benches are covered (like bus stops), so you don't receive any unwelcome surprises from overhead.  I could have sat there looking at the exotic birds all day long.

This is the bird who caught and ate a fish right out of the stream in front of him.

What's important about this zoo goes on behind the viewing areas.  This is the zoo that saved the California Condor from extinction.  They have two Great Pandas on loan from China, and the San Diego Zoo has the most successful panda breeding program in the entire country.   They are trying to save tigers, elephants, and rhinoceros to name a few from extinction. They have pioneered innovative treatments of exotic animals.  What surprised me the most was a white dog inside the cheetah enclosure.  Cheetahs are very high strung, and the white dog and the cheetah were raised together from the time they were both born, so they view one another as friends rather than hunter and prey.  The dog's function is to keep the cheetah mellow, and if my pictures are any indication, he's doing a good job.

This is a California Condor; their wing span can be up to 25'

My one disappointment was we didn't see the Great Pandas.  They were slumbering inside their outdoor cave - they sleep about 20+ hours a day, and the only chance to really see them is feeding time.  We decided not to stand in front of the enclosure for 40 minutes waiting for feeding time.  The other big sleepers were the koalas.  They sleep about 22 hours a day.  The zoo cleverly designed sleeping perches for them which just happen to be in perfect view of the spectators like us.

One of fifteen sleeping perches in the koalas Eucalyptus 'forest'

The cheetah watching us

This was a great day.  And, we topped it off with dinner at a French Bistro in a hip part of town.  I ate a local sea bass over quinoa in a white wine butter sauce with very tiny pieces of asparagus scattered through the quinoa.  It was the best restaurant fish dish I've eaten in quite awhile.  Of course, we ended the evening with chocolate mousse.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.  I edited these on Google Photo.  If you click on the information button, you should see the kind of information I usually put directly on the individual pictures when I'm editing in the now obsolete Picasa program.  

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bl6KyTHygFKG3f1w2 

    

        

When the Unexpected Pops Up, It's Delightful

Sometimes, while traveling, we see unexpected stuff.  We think, "Is this for real?"  I've seen an entire park of miniature famous buildings - all about 25% the size of the real thing.  I'm talking Westminster Abbey, the White House, the Taj Mahal, and so forth.  That place took the cake since each of the 50 or so buildings were constructed by one person over a 30 year period.  When we were in Maine, we found a bird museum - birds faithfully carved lifesized in exquisite detail in wood. Again, the lifetime work of one man.

As a 'tack on' to a day at the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, we went to the Model Railroad Museum just to round out the day, and we found something entirely unexpected.  This place rivals lots of places we've seen because this museum represents the collaboration of four separate groups of people each maintaining portions of an overall vision of model railroading.  These exhibits have taken hundreds of hours to complete, and additional hours every day from 11am to 4pm to keep the models operational.  Here are examples of model railroading at its finest:

San Diego Port - circa 1950

There are four separate clubs represented in the exhibitions.  Three out of the four create their own models and landscape based on aerial photographs.  The fourth is designed for children and appropriately is called the "Toy Train" Exhibit.  All the models in this exhibit are purchased ready made by this club from the various model railroading companies, Lionel being the most famous. (Sadly, according to one of the club members I interviewed, Lionel chose not to offer any support in terms of offering any models or other equipment the club needed to create this fabulous set up.)

Here's John manning the exhibition for visitors and answering questions - a great ambassador for the hobby

Do you ever set up a Christmas Village somewhere in your house as a decoration?  Well, the Toy Train exhibition was like that except on steroids and with trains running through it. An entire town has been re-created right down to the cars and people.  This is the one thing this club has in common with the other three clubs.

This is one small corner of the Toy Train exhibition.  I love the theater is showing "Gone with the Wind".  There are all sorts of 'fun' details in this model.  Can you spot the star of the Disney movie "Cars"?

By contrast, the other three model railroading clubs use a different scale of train than the Toy Train exhibit, and strive for accuracy of the placement of the train tracks through a representation of an actual landscape at a certain time period.

Actual farmhouse with outbuildings exactly located (see train running on left) circa 1953 - train route from Bakersfield  to Mojave.  [See aerial photograph below]

This club is in the process of building the exact landscape, towns, trestles, bridges, and tunnels of the train route from Bakersfield to Mojave - a portion of the train tracks servicing the length of California.  The trick for the real railroad was to build a huge trestle and a series of tunnels for the track. (Remember, this model mimics the real thing.)

Trace your finger between Bakersfield and Mojave.  That's the train track which had to be built in order to get train service from north to south in California, and this model railway club is building the route in their display.

First, they pour over aerial photography of the period they are trying to build, so not only will the topography be accurate, but the towns along the route will also be portrayed accurately for the time period.  One of the railroaders told me the time period was circa 1953 or possibly a little later since in 1952 there was a 7.5 earthquake which damaged portions of the track, trestles and tunnels.  What's shown in the model is what was rebuilt after the quake.

Aerial Photograph of a portion of the route between Bakersfield and Mojave

Miniature trestle in one of the railroad models

I learned a huge number of factoids during our tour of these models.  The "Toy Train" operators bring their own personal trains to the model, and flip one switch.  The train(s) then run non-stop for the entertainment of the visitors.  The ambassadors stand in the center of the exhibit and answer questions.  They even have a uniform - each wears a blue work shirt with their names embroidered on them.   The "Toy Train" exhibit is decorated for holidays - the main ones being:  Halloween and Christmas.  The decorating takes several club members about 12 hours to both put up and take down the decorations.  I also noticed how very dust free and clean the "Toy Train' exhibit was in contrast to the other three models.  Doug and John confided there's a very petite lady member of the club who regularly climbs up onto the model with her duster and other cleaning supplies.  (I should have known the reason it was so clean was because of the work of a woman!)

By contrast, the other three models are completely different in scope and intent.  First, they are modeled on a smaller scale than the more well known "O" scale popularized by the Lionel Train Company and used by the Toy Train Exhibit.  Next, the other 'clubs' have two types of members.  One type of member pours over aerial photographs, and literally sculps the shown landscape to scale usually out of styrofoam.  Rocks, brooks, trees, bushes, roads, and, of course, train tracks are added.  There are also members who build trestles, tunnels, and bridges.  Anecdotally, one club member confided they tore apart an entire section which had almost been completed because it was 2" off 'scale'.  These members also build buildings and towns to scale and then paint them realistically.  Here's an example of building constructed by one club.

Notice, we're having an employee meeting out front of the Sun Harbor Company.  (This was a real building on this site during the time period of the model)

The other type of member is less into modeling and more into railroading.  Railroading means a club member actually runs a train in the model adhering to all the rules and regulations a real train engineer would have observed on that particular route.  As one member who was running a train in the model told me, "In this stretch of track, the train may not exceed a 23 mph speed just as the rule would have been for the real train"  Then, he whipped out of his back pocket a well thumbed 5"x 5" book of about 50 pages of 'rules'.  As he put it, any member who is railroading (running a train on the model) who does not adhere scrupulously to the rules is in a world of hurt.  These railroaders stand in the center of the model and make sure they are observing all the switches, and throwing all appropriate switches in addition to monitoring the speed of the train which changes as the train progresses through the model. The club railroaders struck me as being almost as serious as real train engineers upon whose railroading skills the lives of people riding a real train depend.

A railroader running a train through the model of the train route between Bakersfield and Mojave  He's standing (actually sitting on a stool) in the center of the model.

Finally, there was a lagniappe thrown into this museum.  This guy is not a model railroader in the traditional sense.  Instead he spent 22 years building his own 1/4th size train engine. Here is Ace Wischstadt, riding his creation which he started builting in 1957 and completed in 1979.  He fabricated most of the parts himself.

 As always, there are more pictures.  I recommend you run these as a 'slideshow', so you can see the captions on the pictures.  

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NxGOinc2odERpkNP2

     

Head Explosion Imminent!

San Diego is beautiful.  Its fabulous climate is well-known.  It has wonderful weather all the time.  Those are the only reasons I can figure why people put up with the snarls that are the roads and freeways here.  My hairdresser says she's lives 'up North' to get out of the craziness.   We live close to the center of town, and I've seen and been involved in 'the craziness' first hand.  The traffic here is no worse than anything Houston or DFW can throw down. The local knowledge needed to drive in Austin has always topped the frustration while driving charts.  However, there's a new town taking over that number one slot.   What makes this town so head banging insane are the roads and the freeways are so convoluted, we are constantly baffled trying to get from point A to B.

Here's an example:  It took us about five trips to figure out how to get to and from our condo to the grocery store.  The details will mean nothing to you, but just envision coming out of your own grocery store and after traveling for three blocks, you have no idea where you are or how to get back home.

No....  We are not developing dementia.  Sometimes streets change names. Other streets appear on GPS, but don't exist going the direction you're traveling. Street signs are fickle and come in all colors and flavors and heights.  For example, in one place marking the name of the street we live on, the sign is waist height, and half the size of a normal street sign.  This is a major turn onto a major parkway.  We drive that way all the time, and we are still anxious trying to find that damn turn each time.  

It takes both of of us to go anywhere.  I've never lived in a place that we didn't get the geography of the neighborhood almost immediately.  (That's the royal 'we'; I usually lag behind Drake in getting the neighborhood streets as a map in my head.)  In this place, one of us (Drake) has to drive while the other one (Jan) has her nose in the iphone saying, "It's three more streets; then turn left.

Today, going to the beach was a perfect example.  We got there using the driver/nose to the iphone combo even though we've been there before.  So, leaving the beach to head back home, we were inadvertently 'winging' it because my iphone was in the beach bag in the far back of the car.  Drake's like, "We've been here twice, so surely I can retrace our steps". Nope.  We managed to go north and west when we were trying for south and east.

I feel the most sorry for Drake.  He has this really superior sense of direction, and his modus operand is to map something once, and then he's got it in his head until time immemorial. He would be able to go back to any other location we've spent more than one month visiting and he'd be able to get around with minimal map interaction.  I thought the top of his head was going to blow off today as it became apparent we were lost trying to get
home from the beach.

We really love to take the transit, but, as with so many cities in San Diego it's really a concept rather than a reality.  The schedule is sporadic, and often it doesn't go someplace that seems a no brainer - like the airport for example.  We have managed to not drive two or three times, and it was such a relief.  Despite the 'getting lost' problems, we've perserved.

We've gone to LaJolla. and Torrey Pines Reserve.  We've been to the Birch Aquarium. We've been horse racing (won 3 out of 7 races); as well as the San Diego Art Museum.  We've been to the Balboa Park Rose Garden.  We've taken in Band Concerts and a live performance of "Hamlet" at the Globe Theater.  We've seen the USS Midway and the United States Sand Sculpture Competition.

Tomorrow we head to the zoo.  I swear.  If we get lost after having been in this area three times, Drake's head may really explode.  Keep your fingers crossed.  If you hear I'm having the car detailed, well, you'll know what happened.

If you want to see some pix, here's a line-up

  https://goo.gl/photos/JFH2MPYskrXe1LSY8  (Aquarium)

https://goo.gl/photos/rfR4DTLXe3DmV3tP9  (LaJolla & Torrey Pines)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VuAnnNVWOymDo5UM2  (San Diego Art Museum)

              

United States Sand Sculpture Competition, San Diego, California

In the past seven years I've been to some interesting events, but just as you think you've seen everything, something new to me pops up.  We attended the United States Sand Sculpture Competition at the Embarcadero on San Diego Bay Harbor today.  When we got tickets, I just assumed it would be outdoors at the waterfront park.  Nope.  Rain would definitely put a big damper on this event, so it was held inside.

So, let's start with the sand:  It's not beach sand, so don't try this the next time you head to the beach.  It's quarry sand which is full of sediment.  The sediment hardens the sand to allow giant sculptures to be carved. These are so big they need scaffolding.  You start at the top and work down.  There are also big slabs of plywood nailed together into boxes which are 'forms' used to pack the sand tightly - especially at the base.  The only thing added to the sand is water - no glue or other hardening agent is allowed. There was also nothing but sand - no props.  

This competition has $60,000 worth of prizes to be handed out to the 'Master Class' of sculptors after the judging on Sunday. There are also 3 Man Teams creating pieces.  One of the Master Sculptors came from as far away as Russia.  Another arrived from Prince Edward Island.  I met a woman in the bathroom who arrived from London!  California was also well represented.  Each category (Master or 3 Man Teams) has two days to complete the sculpture.  This is temporary art.  They will all be destroyed on Monday.

I started talking to one of the Archisand owners as he was working with his three man team.  Archisand  is a sand sculpting corporation.  You can contract with this company to sculpt your own private sand sculpture.  Most of these people in the 'master' ranks have been carving for twenty plus years, and most of them do this for a living!  You can't do that by winning competition money, but rather by creating sculptures for events.

The Archisand guys are both architects and have known each other for more than 30 years.  They met one another at their first architecture job.  Gradually, they formed a team, entered more and more competitions, and then founded Archisand and began sculpting full time.  One confided he likes building with sand rather than bricks and mortar because of the instant gratification. These guys are 'masters', and they had completed their "Master Sculptor" entry, (Symbiosis) and three of them were working on the 'Summer of Love' for the 3 Man Competition.   Each sculpture has a name and it is often clever.  My favorite sculpture was named after Newton's Third Law.  (For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.)  Drake's favorite was called 'Horse Power'.  The US Sand Sculpture Competition is the top of the pyramid in competitions.  The Archisand guy confided they don't enter the lower tier competitions anymore - it wouldn't be fair was the way he saw it.

There were about a dozen sand sculptures being created inside the building where passengers get on and off a cruise ship when one is in port.  Here's my favorite, and Drake's favorite.

"Dancing to Newton's Third Law"

        

Horse Power

If you'd like to see the rest of the sculptures, then, click on the link:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MhMpdTW7gfqEuCCu1

It's a Dog's Life

I think it's time to get in trouble with my readers.  Ready?  I'm sick of dogs everywhere.  Yes, I just said that.  This condominium we've rented in San Diego is dog heaven.  There's tons and tons of grass.  You can walk your dog by circling the building, and I must admit I've yet to see a single dog owner here who isn't picking up the 'mess'. I get that dogs are often the emotional lifelines of older people.  I should know; I live in Sun City for half the year.  I understand younger people are postponing marriage and are lonely at the end of a long work day.  And, if you want to enjoy your dog in your home, fine with me.  If you want to walk a quiet, well behaved dog heeled on a leash, go for it.

 However, I'm sick to death of hearing 'the yapper' twice a day, every day.  Just like that one kid in the class who's a troublemaker and a pot stirrer, this little yapper in our condo invariably snarls, yaps and growls at any other dog it even sees, and then we are off to the races.  I'm right at the point of walking out onto the balcony and screaming 'GET A MUZZLE' the next time I hear that little monster.

Here's another big secret I'd like to share with dog owners :  Your dog is not a person.  It doesn't belong on the couch in your living room.  It doesn't need a chair at the dinner table.  It doesn't need health insurance.  I'm not interested in having breakfast, lunch, or dinner with it in a restaurant.  I'm not too thrilled about doggie cookies displayed in the bakery window. I don't care if they are "baked locally with human-grade grain-free ingredients in the fun flavors of blueberry, bacon, peanut putter, meatball and ginger". (Just wondering what breed of dog eats blueberry or ginger?)   It shouldn't be sitting in an airline seat.  I don't think it cares if the feeding dish is ergonomically designed to ease neck strain.  Hiking trails are for people not dogs, and definitely not for dogs off leashes.  Sames goes for beaches.  For some reason, if it's a trail or a beach, dog owners don't feel obliged to pick up the feces. They just leave it for the rest of us to enjoy.  

I don't want my shoe bitten.  I don't want my shoe laces nibbled.  I don't want my pants leg slobbered on.  I don't want dog hairs on any article of my clothing.  I don't want to be jumped on.  I don't want to be crotch sniffed.  I don't want to be leg humped.  I don't want to be barked at.  I don't want to be growled at and particularly with bared teeth.  I especially don't want to smile and be gracious when your dog rips, tears, or destroys something that belongs to me.

And if all that isn't bad enough, here's another newsflash:  Holidays are also for people, not dogs.  Your dog doesn't want or need a Halloween costume.  It doesn't like to trick or treat since it shouldn't be eating candy. It doesn't need an Easter basket with doggie safe chocolate.  I'm not particularly interested in receiving a Christmas card from your animal.  And, for Pete's sake, no dog likes fireworks.

Let's play the age old children's game of 'which one is not like the others'.  Here are your three choices:  service dogs, working dogs and emotional support dogs.  Yep, emotional support dogs do not have either the legal status or training of the other two.  Talk about a scam:  Buy a blanket that says 'emotional support dog' with some bogus seal embroidered on it, and that dog owner thinks he or she can bring the animal anywhere.  Nope.  Those silly little dogs do not have the same legal standing as real service dogs.  Your emotional support dog does not have the legal right to be in the shopping mall, the movie theater, the restaurant, and especially not the grocery store which is just flat out against the health regulations in every state.

Shame on every business owner who is turning a blind eye and allowing these bogus dogs where they don't belong.  Just think about it for a minute - there easily could have been a dog riding in that grocery cart you just put your food into.  I make it a particular point to COMPLAIN to any assistant manager or store manager or restaurant manager I can find about this travesty.  Every single one of them has said, "I don't like it either, but it's impossible to stop."  No, it isn't.  You post a sign:  Service Dogs only.  You turn these other dogs away for a couple of days, and problem solved.

At this point, you're thinking, "Gosh, Jan, you don't like dogs?"  Wrong.  I like dogs.  On the floor, in your house and not barking outside of mine.    
  

Not My America

What is happening to us?  Who is us?  Well, us, you know, Americans.  We come in all colors.  We come in all religious persuasions.  We all come from somewhere else.  Well, except for me - half my family is American Indian, Cherokee to be specific.  But, notice:  I said half.  The other half is Swiss, Italian and English.  At least I think so....  And, that about says it all, doesn't it?  Some of us are fearfully looking at other Americans like they are lesser beings.  If you are an American citizen, or struggling to become an American citizen, you are never lesser.  It's time to stop being fearful because someone doesn't look like you.

Do you think this angst over ethnic identity is new?  No.  It isn't.  Immigration to the United States has occurred in 'waves'.  What historians now call the First Great Wave occurred between 1880 to the mid 1920's.  How many people came?  About 600,000 per year.  Oh, and the problems that mass wave of immigrants caused.  They were dirty.  They ate funny, food.  They didn't speak English.  They acted weird.  They dressed strangely.  Some of them actually weren't Christians.  From 1900 to 1910 the total population grew from 76 to 92 million.  And it was all those foreigners having babies.  The mill owners and manufacturers were thrilled.  They need bodies.  Far more bodies than the native born population could supply.

The 21st century also does not have the corner on nativists (people who think only persons born in a country should have rights).  There were also active nativists in the 19th century. These were people totally opposed to large groups of people having the rights of citizenship. They were Anti-Chinese and Anti-Japanese.  They were Anti-Negro.  They were Anti-Jewish. They were Anti-German, and above all they were Anti-Catholic. And they were violent.  They carried torches in night time parades, and if you were the wrong persuasion, in the wrong place, you could easily get beaten up or even killed.   If you lived in the South, the nativists were called the Ku Klux Klan, and if you were black, you could be beaten and even lynched since the Klan operations were sanctioned by the ruling class which was lily white.

Looking backward 100 years, those attitudes seem sort of sad and un-American, don't they? The fury over immigration in the first part of the 20th century was all about white protestants feeling overwhelmed in some of the major cities by the influx of Catholics immigrants (Italians, Irish, Polish), who seemed to be flooding into the country.  And they were all jockeying in the labor market for jobs.  In the South it was all about perpetuating the 'lost cause' through virtual slavery.  The Great Migration in this country was not east to west; it was south to north - the movement of 12 million people of color realizing second class citizenship had become institutionalized and legalized in the South.

Then, the manufacturing system stabilized, and there was less need for foreign labor. The Great Depression arrived, and all the tensions of world politics - can anyone say WWII and the following Cold War?  This all resulted in what historians call 'The Great Pause'. Very few immigrants came into the country, and the quota system was instituted.  Segregation had become so firmly entrenched in the South no ordinary white person even questioned it.

Post 1965, the United States birth rate began dwindling.  Dwindling birthrates mean the social contract between the young and the old breaks down.  What social contract? The young work and take care of the old, and this system perpetuates itself - but you need enough babies resupplying the system. Immigration restriction was loosened. The second great wave of immigration began. Between 1965 and 1990 there were 1 million immigrants per year. By 1990 there were 1.5 million new immigrants each year (1 million legally, and 1/2 million illegally.), and that level of immigration has continued.  Currently, we have a population of about 335 million, of which 61 million are  immigrants since 1965.  Although, it seems to me after 50+ years, can you really be labeled an immigrant?  And this second wave of immigration is what is keeping the social contract in the United States healthy since historically immigrants tend to have more children.

In reaction to the Second Great Wave of immigration, we once again have people marching. Are they asking for the right to vote, to own property, get bank loans, or live anywhere they choose? Nope.  This time it's all about anger over the changing demographics of the country.  This time the marginalized feel it's OK to wave Nazi flags and flaunt Nazi insignia and spout the racial nonsense of white supremacy.  The America I want to live in respects others and lives the Christian ideal that we are all neighbors no matter what color we are.  I neither need nor want white supremacy.
 
It doesn't matter who did or didn't have a permit to assemble in Charlotte.  That's a trivial smoke screen to obscure the main issue:    Anyone who arrays themselves with Nazi symbols or in Ku Klux Klan regalia has no place in the United States of America.  My father, my uncles and cousins fought against those Nazi and fascist  bastards who exterminated people they didn't think were up to their purity standards. The despicable Klan still stands for terrorizing and lynching people.  Using those symbols is like throwing a bomb. It's using a car to deliberately try to kill someone you think is 'lesser' than you are because he or she is non-white.  

Collectively, we stood by and did nothing in the 1880's and the 1890's when the "Jim Crow" laws were passed.  (FYI:  A Jim Crow law legally sanctions racial segregation.)  The Klan became the violent enforcers of these types of laws in the South. Their tactics involved secrecy, terror, and mob violence.  A sidebar to that enforcement was the erecting of monuments to a Confederacy whose sole purpose was to withdraw from the Union to perpetuate slavery. It was no accident the Confederate monuments were mostly built at the same time the Jim Crow laws were being passed, and their real intent were as visual reminders of just who was still in charge.  It took approximately 80+ years to unravel the travesty of justice that effectively denied citizenship to Southern blacks.  

Now the Klan is marching again.  They are being joined by people who are spreading Nazi ideas.  This is not the time 'to be nice'.  This is not the time to 'look the other way' and turn back to the trivial pursuits of sports, fashion, food, and gossip.  It's time to stop the veneration of people who stood for destroying this country.  It's the time to stand up and proclaim The United States of America does not sanction racial supremacy.  Read the Constitution.

Is it really so very important to continue to have visual reminders of the Jim Crow laws which legally enforced segregation, knowing your place, and being denied the rights of citizenship?  Is that really the history we want venerated?  If you truly feel the Confederate statues of generals on horses are 'part of our history', then let's really show ALL our history and cast some new bronzes of slaves in chains, dressed in rags at the feet of these great heroes who fought against the United States.  Put that picture in your mind, and see if the current statues don't seem to be pretty tarnished.
  

See the Eclipse

If you missed the eclipse, then here are the highlights from our five hour C-SPAN watching of the entire event starting in Oregon and proceeding all the way to South Carolina.  Here are some of my takes:

(1)  The next total eclipse viewable across a major swath of the USA is April 8, 2024.  The next one proceeds diagonally up through Texas and exits in Maine.

(2)  The word most used by ordinary people to describe the eclipse was 'amazing'.

(3)  Lots of people gathered together in communities all across the US in church parking lots and stadiums.

(4)  Many schools across the nation which had already started had a 'release day' for the eclipse

(5)  You could see cool pictures in Times Square - the big TV was broadcasting CSPAN

(6)  C-SPAN broadcasted the NASA channel for more than five hours

(7)  The moon is not circular - it's a polyhedron (many sided) due to being blasted over
the eons by astroids

(8)  Science awareness across the USA was boosted.

(9)  Lots of people traveled to the pathway of the total eclipse

(10)  I liked the comment:  'it was a wonder of God'

(11)  In the path of totality there was a 10 degree temperature drop - which startled people as did the total darkness.

(12)  A total eclipse helped people understand how dependent we are on the sun

(13)  The GOES satellite showed a photo of the 'dark' sweeping across the USA

(14)  Seeing the corona and the earth's magnetic shield was AMAZING!

https://goo.gl/photos/CKDHWDoMQxs9tP5Z8

Finally, I will definitely be in the path of totality in 2024