Aug 20

 

Aug 16, 2021 Week: 34 Day: 232
Ave. Sky Cover:  10%\Visibility: 10 miles
Local Temp:   74°\ 48° Wind: 7mph\ Gusts: 20mph
Low risk of fire Active fire: 361mi. \ Lightning: 189mi.
Aug Averages: 79°\50° (9 days w/moisture) 

Today’s Quote

  

 

Weekly Observations

 

National Environmental Services Week: Link	2-20
National Aviation Week National Chef's Appreciation Week Link	15-21
Minority Enterprise Development Week	18-24
National Little League Week Link	19-29

 

Daily Oberservations

 

Bacon Lovers Day Chocolate Pecan Pie Day Lemonade Day Radio Day

  

Favorite Memes

 

  

My Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts

 Mary is back in town so Faith, another retired teacher from Tuba and I had lunch. She had a great time in Oregon, except for all the smoke on the drive up and back and at the beach. Mary’s neighbor got her chimney hit by lightning yesterday. Burned out the washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher that are now in the driveway. It knocked out Mary’s internet and TV. The TV is no more. Faith is busy doing some great crafts. She loves crafts and has a 10-needle embroidery sewing machine. We caught up on school gossip too and remembered some great Tuba stories. Good conversation and great food.

One of my former students and T-ball player now lives in Flag. She was on the Phx news after her Flag house flooded. Sad. Clouds are rolling in again for another monsoon afternoon. I didn’t open any windows until afternoon as the while it was in the low 70’s, the air feels different. 

 

Historical Events

 1191 Crusader King Richard I kills 3,000 muslim prisoners in Akko

1866 President Andrew Johnson formally declares US Civil War over

1905 Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen forms the first chapter of T'ung Meng Hui, a union of all secret societies determined to bringing down the Manchus (Qing dynasty)

1920 – The first(?) commercial radio station, 8MK (now WWJ), began operating in Detroit.

1920 – The National Football League was organized as the American Professional Football Conference in Canton, Ohio.

1957 USAAF balloon breaks an altitude record at 102,000' (310,896 m)

1964 US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Economic Opportunity Act, an anti-poverty measure totaling nearly $1 billion

1986 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill shot and killed14 of his co-workers, injured 6 more, and then committed suicide. It was the initial example of “going postal”.

2018 Pope Francis releases letter to all Catholics condemning sexual abuse atrocities and clerical cover-ups "We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them"

2020 Former adviser to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon arrested and charged with fraud over a fundraising campaign to build a wall on the Mexican border

2020 Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny falls into a coma after a suspected poisoning (later confirmed to be Novichok poisoning)

2020 Kamala Harris accepts her nomination for vice-president, becoming the 1st US woman of color on a major-party ticket saying "there is no vaccine for racism"

 

Birthdays Today

 @67 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President (d. 1901; pneumonia)

90 – Don King, American boxing promoter

86 – Ron Paul, American politician, and physician

75 – Connie Chung, American journalist

73 – Robert Plant, English singer-songwriter

67 – Al Roker, American news anchor, television personality

@65 – Isaac Hayes, singer-songwriter, producer (d. 2008, strokes)

59 – James Marsters, American actor

@46 – H.P. Lovecraft, short story writer, editor, novelist (d. 1937; cancer)

@40 – Jim Reeves, American singer-songwriter (d, 1964; plane crash)

29 – Demi Lovato, American singer-songwriter and actress

 

 

 

Aug 19

 

Aug 19, 2021 Week: 34 Day: 231
Ave. Sky Cover:  80%\Visibility: 10 miles
Local Temp:   69°\ 52° Wind: 9mph\ Gusts: 12mph
Low risk of fire Active fire: 361mi. \ Lightning: 12mi.
Aug Averages: 79°\50° (9 days w/moisture) 

Today’s Quote

  

 

Weekly Observations

 

National Environmental Services Week: Link	2-20
National Aviation Week National Chef's Appreciation Week Link	15-21
Minority Enterprise Development Week	18-24
National Little League Week Link	19-29

 

Daily Oberservations

 

Aviation Day Bow Day Potato Day Soft Ice Cream Day World Humanitarian Day World Photo Day

  

Favorite Memes

 

  

My Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts

Yesterday’s storm was bigger than I realized. Parts of our mountain got 3” of rain in less than an hour…a ‘100-500-year event’. Unfortunately, the heaviest hit area was a burn scare from our last big fire. This led to a torrent of flash flooding hitting several areas of Flagstaff. This summer flash floods are not uncommon. What was unusual was a loud, beeping text alert soon after I posted yesterday’s blog on my phone. It said to ‘stay in place, do not travel’.  Right after that, Facebook was showing lots of rushing water videos throughout East Flagstaff.  On the East side of town, the main drag, Rt. 66, was also blocked at many points by rushing water. One elementary school has been closed due to flooding in the hallways and classrooms of their building. No problems in our compound. More rain is expected today.

Today is cool, windows and door closed.

TGIR…the Gov. of AZ has issued a proclamation that any school district that requires the wearing of masks inside any school will mean that their share of $163 million in Covid Federal relief aid will be held and not distributed to them. His reasoning <?> is that mask wearing by children is a parental decision, not a government decision. Before the proclamation, numerous school districts, through elected school boards, required mask wearing. Time and the courts will decide who is right. It appears the boards will keep the mask wearing until the courts decide. Crazy.

Texas schools are having similar problems and they think they got around the order by simply changing their dress code to include mask wearing. Hmmm.

Sticking with schools, there is a small school, Cove Day School, on the Navajo Reservation, that educates K-3 and has 13 Bureau employees. It has been indefinitely closed and children in the community will get their education online. It was recently discovered high levels of radiation in the classrooms and buildings. It is believed this is from uranium mining from decades ago. No word on where staff will be living or how the online learning will be available since the school is off limits. Sack lunches will come from a nearby public school. Scary for sure.  

Historical Events

1692 Five more people hanged for witchcraft (19 in all) in Salem, Massachusetts

1791 Benjamin Banneker sends a copy of his Almanac and writes a letter to Thomas Jefferson criticizing his pro-slavery stance and requesting justice for African Americans using language from the Declaration of Independence

1812 – American frigate USS Constitution defeated the British frigate HMS Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia, earning the nickname “Old Ironsides”.

1887 Dmitri Mendeleev makes a solo ascent by balloon to an altitude of 11,500 feet (3.5 km) above Klin, Russia to observe an eclipse

1893 – Frank Wisner invented the Root Beer Float.

1934 – The first All-American Soap Box Derby was held in Dayton, Ohio.

1993 Mattel & Fisher Price toy companies merge

2020 Apple becomes the 1st US company to be valued at $2 trillion, just 2 years after it reached $1 trillion valuation 

Birthdays Today

@87 – Coco Chanel, founded the Chanel Company (d. 1971)

87 – Renée Richards, American tennis player, and ophthalmologist

@80 – [Peter Edward] Ginger Baker, drummer, and songwriter (d. 2019)

@76 – Orville Wright, American engineer, pilot, co-founded the Wright Company (d. 1948)

75 – Bill Clinton, 42nd President

74 – Gerald McRaney, American actor

@68 – Ogden Nash, American poet (d. 1971; Chron’s disease)

@70 – Malcolm Forbes, publisher, politician (d. 1990; heart attack)

@70 – Gene Roddenberry, screenwriter, producer (Star Trek) (d.1991; stroke)

58 – John Stamos, actor

52 – Matthew Perry, actor 

 

 

Aug 18

 

Aug 18, 2021 Week: 34 Day: 230
Ave. Sky Cover:  90%\Visibility: 10 miles
Local Temp:   75°\ 56° Wind: 6mph\ Gusts: 12mph
Low risk of fire Active fire: 203mi. \ Lightning: 1/2mi.
Aug Averages: 79°\50° (9 days w/moisture) 

Today’s Quote

 

 

Weekly Observations

 

National Environmental Services Week: Link	2-20
National Aviation Week National Chef's Appreciation Week Link	15-21
Minority Enterprise Development Week	18-24

 

Daily Oberservations

 

Fajita Day Ice Cream Pie Day Mail Order Catalog Day Serendipity Day

 

 

Favorite Memes

 

 

 

My Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts

 

A hard male rain with thunder, lightning, and small hail hit about 30 minutes ago. Now it is just a drizzle.

It has been years since we have had a summer monsoon with as much rain as this summer. Hoping we are moving out of our 20-year drought. If not, the local forest fire danger will be frightening. The rain has turned everything green, but if heat without moisture returns, everything will be tinder dry in just a few weeks and that means huge fires.

It is time the government and the population wake up and admits we lost our war in Afghanistan. We got bin Laden a decade ago and it has been downhill ever since. We were in battle in Vietnam 19 years, 5 months and 8 days. We were in battle in Afghanistan for 19 years, 10 months and 6 days. As a baby boomer, we were in conflict in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. I have known soldiers in each war. Most of them, but not all, came home alive. Some returned with visible injuries, others with invisible ones. The country called and they served. Before we send any troops to a foreign country again, we need to have a clear goal, complete it, and leave. We need to be spending our funding on helping the Vets who have returned with visible and invisible injury. No Vet should be hungry, no Vet should be in housing distress. Every Vet should have medical and mental health services when needed at no cost to them. It is time to reprioritize our goals so that assisting returning combat Vets is very near the top of our military goals.

The world is watching how we handle the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Yesterday China was busy ‘educating’ the Taiwanese as to how we abandoned our Afghan translators, locals who helped us, and all the Afghans as we quickly withdrew. China warned Taiwan that they could be next.   

Interesting:

 

Historical Events

 

293 BC The oldest known Roman temple to Venus is founded, starting the institution of Vinalia Rustica (grape harvest festival)

1872 – The first mail-order catalogs were published by Montgomery Ward. In 2000, the retail outlet was closed.

1909 Mayor of Tokyo Yukio Ozaki presents Washington, D.C. with 2,000 cherry trees, which President Taft decides to plant near the Potomac River.

1920 – The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution granted women the right to vote.

1960 “The Pill” – birth control went on sale.

1963 James Meredith becomes the 1st black graduate from University of Mississippi

2017 Civilian researchers led by Paul Allen re-discover the USS Indianapolis 18,000 feet below the Pacific surface, 72 years after it was sunk by Japanese torpedoes

 

Birthdays Today

 

94 – Rosalynn Carter, First Lady

88 – Roman Polanski, French-Polish director, producer

@85 – Shelley Winters [Shirley Schrift], actor (d. 2006)

85 – Robert Redford, actor

@71 – Marshall Field, founded Marshall Field’s (d. 1906; pneumonia)

60 – Bob Woodruff, American journalist, author

@57 – Patrick Swayze, American actor, and dancer (d. 2009)

52 – Christian Slater, actor

52 – Edward Norton, actor

43 – Andy Samberg, American actor, comedian

@38 – Roberto Clemente, Puerto Rican-American baseball player (d. 1972, plane crash)

@35 – Meriwether Lewis, American soldier, explorer, and politician (d. 1809; shot, suicide<?>)