All posts by Steve Stern

Petrichor….pe-trahy-kawr

Death Valley

Several days ago, I got out of the shower and was drying myself only to realize that Precious Mae’s litter box hadn’t been cleaned recently. I got a bag and cleaned the litterbox, mentally thinking about how distasteful cleaning cat shit and pee out of the litter box is. In my imagination, at least, cleaning the litter box, running the little-slotted shovel through the pile of litter, stirs up a cloud of contaminated dust that settles on everything, especially my slightly damp bare skin. So I got back in the shower to rinse off. The millisecond  I got in, I was flooded with the familiar smell of summer camp. I could see that the shower was wet, I could feel the wet walls and door, but neither of those senses transported to another place and another time like that familiar smell.

Two other familiar smells that I associate with places are the distinctive smell of the Eastern Sierras, especially in the summer and fall, and rain in the desert. But it’s not just rain, as I found out about thirty years ago. A friend and I had gone to Dante’s View to look at the stars, Dante’s View is at an elevation 5,476 feet and in those days there was not much light pollution from Las Vegas so the view of the sky from Dante’s View, on a moonless night, was stellar (sorry). 

As an aside, this was over the Easter Break and we were awakened about 4:30 by a Geology Class from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, driving up in about five cars. At first, a bunch of cars driving up in the dark was a little disconcerting because we were sleeping on the ground, right next to the parking lot – which, in those days, was above the current parking lot, on top of the ridge – but we soon learned that they had come to watch the sunrise and get a lecture on the forming of Death Valley. All we had to do was sit up in our sleeping bags to attend the class. It was the only time I listened to a lecture in my sleeping bag. End aside.  

After the lecture, we drove down to Furnace Creek – which is at sea level – and, as we dropped down in elevation, it got hotter. It had been a cold night so we rolled the windows down and opened the sunroof,  soaking in the heat and the view at about 20 miles per hour. We had just turned off of the Furnace Creek Wash Road onto Highway 190, it was probably in the high 80s and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky when we smelled rain. The smell was so strong and so distinctive that we were both shocked. I slowed down and, for a moment, I thought I had popped a radiator hose, but it wasn’t that rubbery smell, it was the distinctive smell of rain in the desert as unlikely as that seemed. Then we turned a corner and there, in front of us, was a huge water truck slowly waddling down Highway 190, water splashing out of the open hatch on top and dribbling down onto the dusty road where it evaporated almost immediately, leaving only that distinctive smell. 

A couple of days ago, I found out that the smell is so distinctive that it even has a name,  petrichor which is defined by Google’s dictionary as a distinctive scent, pleasant or sweet, produced by rainfall on very dry ground. According to Wikipedia,  The term was coined in 1964 by…Isabel Bear and Richard Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature. In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, a metabolic by-product of certain actinobacteria, which is emitted by wet soil, producing the distinctive scent.

The same Wikipedia entry went on to say that the oil retards seed germination and early plant growth. I knew that creosote bushes – Larrea tridentata, if you care – drip poison to stop other plants from growing nearby but I thought it was the only one. Life in the desert is harsh, water is scarce, and it turns out that lots of desert plants do the same thing giving us that familiar and pleasant smell; petrichor. 

I’m in Love with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar

Americana, Politics

No one puts a scarf on my head but me. It’s my choice—one protected by the first amendment. And this is not the last ban I’m going to work to lift.  Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar,

Cognitive dissonance is Republican commentators stalking, doctoring, + editing my casual livestreams out of context in order to sow doubt in my intelligence, all while blindly supporting a man who thinks our greatest defense against forest fires is: A Rake. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

What I really like about both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, is that they are not afraid to be unabashedly themselves. For somebody my age, 78, being myself is still a struggle but it seems to come naturally to these young women. They both come from the bottom rung of the Middle Class; they didn’t starve growing up but there was no money for the luxuries most of us – but not most people – consider necessities and these are the people they want to represent.  In my opinion, these are the people who have to be represented if we are going to survive as a functional democracy.  

Ocasio-Cortez has a hyperactive Twitter presence where she “shares moments of excitement and pride at the incredible privilege of being new to Congress” (to quote from an article by a young, but older, Latina who has spent her life trying to fit into – she doesn’t identify it this way but I will – the white patriarchy of Washington). Much of what Ocasio-Cortez shares is logistics – because that’s what most of life is, after all – and that has given the right-wing media lots to go after. When she tweeted about how expensive rent is in DC and that she couldn’t afford to get an apartment until she started getting her Congressional paycheck which wouldn’t happen until January. Some right-wing pundit retweeted with a snarky comment along the line of You should have thought about saving some money before you came to Washinton. Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t phased, she tweeted back: There is no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed. Mocking lower incomes is exactly how those who benefit from + promote wealth inequality the most keep everyday people silent about 1 of the worst threats to American society: that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. What the snarker didn’t get is that most people can’t live in Washington DC and they relate to that tweet.

More importantly is that even with that background – or, perhaps, because of it – both Omar and Ocasio-Cortez think that Global Warming is our biggest threat and they don’t want it buried in the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (which over the last several administrations has done nothing). When Ocasio-Cortez tweets People are going to die if we don’t start addressing climate change ASAP. It’s not enough to think it’s “important.” We must make it urgent. That’s why we need a Select Committee on a Green New Deal, & why fossil fuel-funded officials shouldn’t be writing climate change policy. she is challenging the traditions that keep the powerful in power, she is challenging the Democratic-house hierarchy and that takes guts. And she challenging it in the area that it most needs challenging, in my view. Like Bernie, Ocasio-Cortez is defined by the establishment media as an unrealistic spender who wants programs we can’t afford, but, like Bernie, her first priority is climate change and its devastating impacts (to quote the just-released Fourth National Climate Assessment which is clear that we are in real trouble).  

As an aside, climate change and its devastating impacts is my core issue, that’ what drew me to Bernie Sanders in the first place. There are lots of things that Bernie has suggested and pushed such as free college, Single Payer Health Insurance, and a living wage that match my personal values, but these are only my values and, while I think they would make this a better place to live, that is only what I think. Climate Change is different, climate change is real, it is a fact, and it is starting to destroy this planet as our home. This is not theoretical, this is real, it is already starting. End aside. 

I want to end, however, on the happy note, for me at least, that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, are already changing the world (or, maybe, they are just tuned into the change that is already happening). A lot of that is that, like Trump, they are bypassing the usual channels – the progress is slow, follow the rules, our rules, filter – by using social media. One tweet exchange that I especially got a kick out of was with Lindsey Graham. When Ocasio-Cortez tweeted about the immigrant families trying to find safe harbor into the US by saying  Asking to be considered a refuge & applying for status isn’t a crime. It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany. It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rawanda. It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America.

The net, Twittersphere went into a frenzy of anger, one of the angry people, Lindsey Graham, tried to put her in her place, saying I recommend she take a tour of the Holocaust Museum in DC. Might help her better understand the differences between the Holocaust and the caravan in Tijuana.

I’m not sure of the order of these next two tweets so I’m just arbitrarily putting Ocasio-Cortez first: , the point of such a treasured museum is to bring its lessons to present day. This administration has jailed children and violated human rights. Perhaps we should stop pretending that authoritarianism + violence is a historical event instead of a growing force. 

About three hours after Graham’s tweet, the Auschwitz Museum tweeted: When we look at  Auschwitz we see the end of the process. It’s important to remember that the Holocaust actually did not start from gas chambers. This hatred gradually developed from words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanisation & escalating violence.

I want to say that I didn’t imagine a future of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes and her ilk. I thought, I hoped, that change would come from the Gavin Newsom generation. It never occurred to me that it would take an entirely new generation of activists to be brave enough to really fight for change and not just talk about it. 

We write unlimited blank checks for war, we JUST wrote a 2 trillion dollar check for the GOP tax cut and NOBODY asks those folks how are they gonna pay for it. So my question is why are our pockets only empty when it comes to education and healthcare for our kids? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Lewis Hamilton Wins Fifth Championship

What's a man?

Lewis Hamilton won the Formula One Drivers’ Championship title a couple of weeks ago. It is his fifth Championship, a feat that is matched only by the great Juan Manuel Fangio in the 1950s and Michael Schumacher in the late 1990s and early oughts. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve tried to write a post about it but I’ve been stalled for reasons that I’m having trouble explaining, so before it becomes old news, here is a video of Lewis on The Daily Show. Enjoy.

Happy Thanksgiving

Uncategorized

We are inundated in bad news but the world really is getting better. Some things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: 

The percentage of people in the world living in extreme poverty has dropped from 85% in 1800 to about 9% today;

in 1800, the average life expectancy of a human was 31 years, today it is 72 years; 

in 1979, there were 636 oil spills from tanker ships, in 2016, there were 3;

in 1900, only 3% of the world was protected in national parks and other reserves, today, 15% is protected; 

worldwide, 90% of grammar school age girls are in school;

and the list goes on and on.

(The above facts are from Factfullness;  Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling. Check it out.)

   

A Couple of Thoughts Between “Oh no”s

Politics

If you don’t get into the mind of the person you are talking to, you can say whatever you want. It won’t be heard. Norbert Haug, former Vice President of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport

When Trump started running against “an invasion” of Latin American immigrants, I thought he was wrong, thinking he should be running on the economy (which is, after all, booming). It turns out that I was wrong and I should have realized it when The New York Times ran a major article on white women Trump supporters saying that Trump is protecting them. At some point during last Tuesday night, Mark Shields commented that the only times the party in power didn’t lose seats in the election after the presidential election was Kennedy in 1962 and Bush in 2002. In both cases, we were, seemingly, on the cusp of war, the Bay of Pigs with Kennedy and Iraq with Bush. Trump campaigned on immigration being an invasion that the Democrats would allow and only he could, or would, protect us from, he turned himself into a sort of war-president – on the backs of helpless and hapless immigrants, I want to add –  like Kennedy or Bush. Anybody who thinks Trump is stupid is fooling themselves. 

The Democrats won the House and that is a big deal. I think. A lot of progressives, running as progressives, won but a lot didn’t. I had a big emotional – and small financial – investment in Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Gillum, and Stacey Abrams, and all three lost. I hadn’t expected that – I guess because I was too emotionally attached to be realistic – thinking that the three could expand the electorate.

I hope the new house doesn’t get bogged down in the Russian collusion bullshit. Yeah, the Russians helped Trump – or tried to – but, so what. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that Trump is a crook and a con-man but I don’t think the help he received rises to the level of an indictable crime and spending a lot of time on that will end up being as self-destructive as Newt Gingrich trying to impeach Clinton.  Although it would be fun to see the new  House investigate the Georgia governor’s election.   

Where the Democrats made the biggest gains seem to be the suburbs and I think that is a reflection of suburbanites being increasingly more identified with their cities. it is where the action is and where people go there on big nights out.