Freeway Moon
Last night, Kate called me at work to say I ought to get out and see the moon rising. I agreed. I walked out of the office and up a steep stretch of Mariposa Street to a spot with an open view to the east across U.S. 101. There was a rising moon and lots of traffic. My camera’s just limping along these days, but this is actually a pretty good impression of the scene.
Afghanistan Reader: Graveyard
“Afghanistan, a graveyard of empires. I (hope) that peace will one day shine, but for now I will just pray.”
–Most widely attributed to Mahmud Tarzi, an Afghan nationalist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Water Project: California Reservoir Watch
The background: The state Department of Water Resources announced yesterday that its “initial allocation” of supplies for the next year is 5 percent. What that means: It’s only promising to deliver 5 percent of the water that customers have asked for. The reason: Three low-rainfall years–nothing Mother Nature can’t handle, but a disaster for us humans–and some limits placed on water shipments to protect endangered fish. The reaction: Agriculture and other water contractors say it sure looks like the sky is falling. So does the governor, whose biggest agenda item for his last year in office is getting the voters to pass an $11 billion bond for water projects. The rhetoric from the water interests has led some environmentalists and other water-policy skeptics to say the 5 percent allocation is little more than a scare tactic to sell the bond.
Whatever the case may be, I noticed an interesting thing in the documents the Department of Water Resources released with its allocation announcement: The water managers are cutting the promised deliveries to 5 percent even though a chart (PDF) they put out shows they have 20 percent more water in the bank than they did last year–when the initial allocation was 15 percent. One of my colleagues at KQED asked the department’s deputy director about this, and the initial answer was along the lines of, “That’s weird–I don’t know.” Later, she suggested the chart was wrong because it didn’t take into account the fact some of the water in storage is already committed to other customers and can’t be allocated. (As a matter of fact, current combined storage at major reservoirs in the Sacramento-San Joaquin system is running 17 percent ahead of last year at this time; of course, last year was really, really bad, and that same group of reservoirs is only storing 72 percent of average for this date.)
The chart still hasn’t been fixed, though, and it lends credence to the arguments that the allocation–which is only a beginning number and is likely to be adjusted far upward as the season progresses–is being used to aid the bond campaign.
Anyway; Since I got into all this stuff yesterday, and since reservoir levels are such a big part of this debate and the state’s well-being, I put together a map showing where the biggest reservoirs are and the current storage levels. Here it is:
View KQED: California Reservoir Watch in a larger map
Twenty-Four
For Kate:
A cloudy December First. We had an appointment up in the hills. Parents were there, and a few friends. I made a big Russian macaroni casserole–Garrison Keillor would call it a hot dish–and I arrived a little late. As the first rain slanted in, streaked the windows, obscured the bay and the town below, you looked into the gray light: calm, absorbed, reflective, maybe visiting scenes of years to come. I saw then, still see looking back into that room from so far away, love, just love.
My Afghanistan Reader: ‘Taliban in Total Rout’
President G.W. Bush in Aurora, Missouri, January 14, 2002:
“…I’m proud of the efforts of many all around our country who are working endless hours to make America safe. But the best way to make America safe is to hunt the enemy down where he tries to hide and bring them to justice, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
“I gave our military a mighty task, and they have responded. I want to thank those of you who have got relatives in the military, a brother or a sister, or a son or a daughter, or a mom or a dad. They have made me proud, and I hope they made you proud, as well.
“We sent the military on a clear mission, and that is to bring the evil ones to justice. It’s a mission, however, that I expanded to include this: that if you hide a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, if you provide aid and comfort for a terrorist, you’re just as guilty as the terrorist. That’s why the Taliban is no longer ruling Afghanistan.
“I think that one of the most joyous things for me is to see the faces of the Afghan women as they have been liberated from the oppression of the Taliban rule. Not only is our military destroying those who would harbor evil, destroying whatever military they had, destroying their defenses, but we’re liberators. We’re freeing women and children from incredible oppression.
“… The Taliban is in total rout. But we haven’t completed our mission yet. And we’re now at a very dangerous phase of the war in the first theater, and that is sending our boys and troops into the caves. You see, we’re fighting an enemy that’s willing to send others to death, suicide missions in the name of religion, and they, themselves, want to hide in caves.
“But you know something? We’re not going to tire. We’re not going to be impatient. We’re going to do whatever it takes to find them and bring them to justice. They think they can hide, but they’re not going to hide from the mighty reach of the United States and the coalition we have put together. …”
Speech delivered in the warehouse of the MFA Food Mill. Full text here.
Farewell November
Several nights ago, I wrote a short thing about Thanksgiving. Who was here (our kids and their inamorata), what we did (cooked, hang out, ate, took time out to watch the space station and space shuttle chase each other), what other significance the day had for me (Thursday, the 26th, would have been my mom’s 80th birthday). But then, just as I got ready to post those reflections, my little blog word-processor ate my homework. Damn! On other occasions, I have sat and tried to recapture the fine stylings I’m sure have been crashed out of existence. This time, I didn’t have it in me. It was getting late. I was not in my finest fettle. I’ve made an undertaking not to stay up until all hours committing the moment’s musings to posterity (I may have to make room for writing in the morning, usually taken up by sundry and diverse necessities such as The New York Times crossword). I went to bed, and haven’t really tried to write since. It wasn’t until tonight that I noticed I’ve let a whole week elapse since last I wrote here.
So for tonight, just this: I’ll get back to Mom’s 80th sometime soon. As to the rest: Farewell to a warm, dry November. December awaits, just eight minutes ahead.
Fly-By
We’ve been having a string of clear evenings in the Bay Area, perfect for watching the nightly fly-by of the International Space Station and the shuttle Atlantis. When the shuttle and the station are docked, they appear as a single, bright star moving from (roughly) west to east. The Atlantis undocked early this morning and rapidly moved away from the station. This evening one of the ships appeared in the northwest, then the other–the space station trailed by the shuttle, I think. From San Francisco, they seemed to move nearly straight overhead, then rapidly vanished into the Earth’s shadow when they were still high above the horizon.
It always surprises me a little not to see others out staring at these objects as they pass over, or that passers-by don’t ask what I’m looking at. A big-city rule, I guess: avoid the harmless-looking guy staring into the sky just in case he’s a lunatic. One time, a co-worker happened upon me watching the space station go over a nearby park. “What happened?” she asked. “Did a bird shit on you?” I told her about the space station and pointed at it. She glanced toward the sky, gave me a look that said she didn’t quite believe anything like that was up there at the moment, and moved on.
Tonight in Berkeley, meantime: Kate knew the twin apparitions of space station and shuttle would become visible at 6:22. She called several neighbors to alert them. While I watched from the lower western edge of Potrero Hill, she had nearly a dozen people out in the street here in our neighborhood for the three-minute show. That’s just one of the things I love about this block: that people will come out to see a night-time sky display–lunar eclipses, comets, meteor showers, whatever’s on tap–and just hang out for a few minutes.
There’s another double-viewing Thanksgiving night. Check your local listings on NASA’s Satellite Sightings Information page.
Who Are These Goons?
A handbill posted on a lightpole at 16th and South Van Ness. The list of suspicious circumstances got me.
Have you recently experienced any of the following:
- “Lost” mail? “Wrong numbers”?
- Dust bunnies? Flies on the windowsill ? Dead moths?
- Tooth aches? Interrupted sleep? Invalid passwords?
- Rearranged possessions? (Your belongings not where you left them?)
- Mismatched socks? Zippers not working properly?
- Odd damage or small stains around your house?
- Theft and sabotage of your food or kitchenware? Appliances behaving strangely?
- Cabinet and drawer handles held on by screws repeatedly loosened ARTIFICIALLY?
- Opened caps on items such as deodorant & food containers being retightened excessively?
- Do you hear sirens? Customers in a store filing into line just as you’re about to check out?
- Itching?
A reader notes (thanks, reader!) that it’s worth visiting the site of The Jejune Institute, noted on the poster as the suspected perpetrator of this harassment. (And if you’re thirsting for further Jejune knowledge, see the Yelp reviews.)
Journal of Self-Promotion
Friday morning, I heard on KCBS, the local all-news AM station, that some students had “taken over” Wheeler Hall, a building on the UC-Berkeley campus. As I wrote our morning news team a note about that, the phone rang. It was one of the morning news team asking whether I could go out and cover the Wheeler Hall story. I said I would.
When I went out to get in the car, I realized I had a flat tire. I thought of riding my bike, but knew it would be hard to find a secure place to lock it up. As I walked back inside the house to ponder my next move — if I walked or took the bus or BART, I’d miss the air time for the upcoming newscast — I heard the neighbors’ dog barking outside. One of the neighbors in question works for the university–in the news office, actually. I ran outside hoping I could catch a ride to campus with him. I did.
I showed up outside Wheeler to find yellow police tape around the building — it might have taken a quarter mile of tape to do put up that line — and several dozen students with banners who had parked themselves across the main north-south path through campus. In a few minutes, I’d sized up what was happening and had lined up a young woman who said she was one of the protest organizers. She wouldn’t give her name, but said it was OK to call her Jane Doe or Emma Goldman. Yeah, she really said that. We put her on the air. I was on, too–both for one of the newscasts and our longer “Forum” discussion show. One observation: I say “um” and “ahhhhh” a lot.
Here are the links to the audio of these immortal radio (and associated) appearances:
The California Report: UC Students Protest Fee Hike
Forum: Students Occupy UC Berkeley Building
Photo slide show: Wheeler Hall protest
And in other self-promotion news: November 22 marks this blog’s sixth anniversary.