Snow Storm

Driving conditions on Highway 26 on January 3, 2022 - KATU photo

We had a snow storm last week, seven inches of snow one day, enough that it hung around for several days. A week ago a friend of my daughter had a baby at St. Vincent Hospital in Beaverton. My daughter wanted to go visit mother and baby at the hospital, but not having a lot of experience driving in snow she asked me to drive. Since I have giant (relatively speaking) four wheel drive pick-em-up truck I said sure, let's go. It was a bit of an adventure.

It was basically a straight shot, ten miles down highway 26. The road was snow packed and there wasn't much traffic. There was no clear pavement. I have never seen it like that before. In addition, the wind was howling, so we are barreling down the road at 40 to 50 MPH and the wind is pushing us around and we drifting around on the road, maybe a foot either side of my intended path. I haven't had so much fun in a long time.

IAman was over on the east side when the storm hit. He checked Google maps before he tried driving over to the west side and all the routes were red so he was expecting a big traffic jam. However, when he got to the highway there was virtually no traffic. The cars that were there were crawling along 15-20 MPH. We suspect Google 'saw' how fast the traffic was moving and decided there was a traffic jam.

P. S. The picture isn't from where we were, but it looked just like that.

Quote of the Day

Mountaineers line up as they climb a slope during their ascent to summit Mount Everest. [Lakpa Sherpa/AFP] 2021, not 1996

Chapter Nine of Into Thin Air by John Krakauer opens with this quote:

Camp Two  April 28, 1996  21,300 Feet 

We tell ourselves stories in order to live . . . .  We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson of the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line on disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. - Joan Didion, The White Album

Wikipedia has a page about Joan's book: 

The White Album is a 1979 book of essays by Joan Didion. Like her previous book Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album is a collection of works previously published in magazines such as Life and Esquire. The subjects of the essays range widely and represent a mixture of memoir, criticism, and journalism, focusing on the history and politics of California in the late 1960s and early 70s.

Real Life India

Man on motorcycle, India

Chinese Balloon

Sailors recover a high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C. on Feb. 5, 2023. (Tyler Thompson/U.S. Navy via The New York Times)

My Daily Kona has a report on the Chinese balloon that explains the story a bit better:

The heat generated by the electronic systems appeared to be enough to provide a targeting lock for the imaging infrared seeker in the AIM-9X. The height of the target—60,000-65,000 ft.—still required the missile to ascend several thousand feet from a launch point at 58,000 ft., a senior defense official says.

 

Funnies

Periscope Film Rescue Operation

SEE HOW PERISCOPE FILM RESCUED A MASSIVE COLLECTION OF CELLULOID MOVIES FROM DESTRUCTION !
PeriscopeFilm

I always thought these guys were British, but that might be because all of their films I saw were British. I suspect most of these films are interesting to a very small audience, but you might find one that lights up your brain.

Periscope Film Website

Words & Axes

Logger - cutting down big tree with axe - tips.
Buckin' Billy Ray Smith

The video is a little long, but I really enjoyed it. Of course, I am partial to axes myself. Or axes. Or axes. Look how many Billy has.

JMSmith got me started with a post about The Uses of Garlic.

He references Acorns for the culture war by Curtis Yarvin, who opens with this:

There is an ancient Lithuanian proverb about a village whose central square was long shaded by a great oak tree. Late one Saturday night, a madman went mad with an axe and cut down the tree.

That night, as was his wont, the wise man of the village was deeply in his cups. When, on Sunday afternoon he painfully arose and looked out his window over the plaza, he exclaimed to see the great oak cut down—then exclaimed again to see the villagers, with rope and crane and shovel, replanting the tree.

They had dug the stump out to a pit, where they were planting the hacked-off trunk. Of course the oak’s leaves were already starting to wither. Still in his pajamas, quite careless of his pounding head and the sun’s savage glare, the wise man rushed down the stairs and into the square. He began to gather acorns and bury them in little holes. Everyone thought the wise man, too, had gone mad. Didn’t he want the tree back? What was he, a squirrel?

Curtis uses some terms I was unfamiliar with:

• Kayfabe - In professional wrestling, kayfabe (/ˈkeɪfeɪb/) is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not staged. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.
• Shoot - A shoot in professional wrestling is any unplanned, unscripted, or real-life occurrence within a wrestling event. It is a carny term shortened from "straight shooting", which originally referred to a gun in a carnival target shooting game that did not have its sights misaligned. Terminology such as this reflects the professional wrestling industry's roots in traveling carnivals. The term has come to mean a legit attack or fight in professional wrestling, and its meaning has broadened to include unscripted events in general. The opposite of a shoot is a work or kayfabe.

I don't know that the culture war can be won. My best hope right now is that the lunatic left will self-immolate within a few years. I am only afraid that will result in the pendulum swinging too far the other way and we end up with The Man In The High Castle.