Susan and I took a short five-day cruise to Ketchikan. While in Ketchikan we flew out to Swan Lake , where I lived and worked in 1982-84. SEAPA gave me a tour. They have recently added flashboards to the spillway to raise the water level in the reservoir.
Thanks to Clay Hammer, John Stanley, and Austin Tollefson.
Every summer there are forest fires and if you listen to the news you get the idea that the world is going to end and we’re all going to die. The media loves fires because it gives them a lot of good TV footage.
Here’s a prediction for a few months from now:
It’s going to snow in the mountains and it will be shown live on TV.
I’m not going to Oregon to see the eclipse because I saw the last one in 1979. It wouldn’t be worth it. , and if you have seen one, …
I was working on a highway construction project a few miles south of Hood River, Oregon, on the Mount Hood Highway. There was a few inches of snow on the ground so there wasn’t much work activity on the project that day. I was in the job office trailer shuffling paper. I had heard about the coming eclipse and what a once-in-a-lifetime experience it was to be.
When the time approached, I left the job office trailer and walked across the road, out into a bright, snow-covered pasture for the best, unobstructed view I could get. There were some hills around, and trees, but the action was pretty much straight overhead as I recall. I think it was probably 11AM +/-. You could look it up.
Then the moon started to obstruct the sun. You could see that it was getting dimmer out, even though it had been a very bright blue day.
Just as the eclipse was nearing totality, I noticed rippling light waves on the snow, like the ones at the bottom of a swimming pool. This was the only special effect that I noticed. The other one was that at the moment of totality, some people reported hearing a “click.” I didn’t hear that. I can’t imagine what would have caused that.
It did get pretty much as black as night. I don’t remember seeing stars. I don’t really recall looking straight at it. The warnings had been out not to do that.
Totality didn’t last very long. The process started reversing, then it was over. I don’t remember how long the whole thing lasted.
That’s all there is to a solar eclipse.
Really, don’t bother.
Although it’s a rare event for us, eclipses have been happening since the beginning of the universe, predictably and consistently. Not as common as the sun coming up in the morning, but
It will be over and you’ll wonder, “is that all there is?”
I was resigned to Hillary winning. “All” the polls had her ahead. I literally prayed for the grace to accept whatever happened in the election and to have faith that we would survive.
The Trump haters are bummed. I endured eight years of Clinton and eight years of Obama, so I know how you feel. I don’t really like Trump that much either, but at least he beat Hillary
It really doesn’t matter who you voted for. You are only one out of millions. You are the minority, this time. You may still choose to believe that you are not wrong.
We still have laws and the President doesn’t make new ones. Obama has been doing all he can to pronounce executive orders, but hopefully Trump will rescind most of them immediately. It really doesn’t matter who is the president. There is an almost-balanced congress and there will be an almost-balanced Supreme Court.
The effects of government actions are not known for years, if not generations. For example, the consequences of Obamacare are only now becoming obvious. It was rammed through by a Democrat congressional majority and president. Gridlock would have been better. Social security is not bankrupt yet, even though that has been forecasted for years. Deficit spending accelerates exponentially but we still don’t have the rampant inflation and economic collapse that has been predicted for decades.
With close balances in both houses of congress and almost as much opposition to Trump from Republicans, we’ll have a lot of gridlock, or should I say compromise, which will prevent further debacles such as Obamacare.
So cheer up, look out your window and notice that you can’t tell who runs the government. Unless of course you are in one of the places that have been run by Democrats for generations, such as Detroit or Baltimore, where there is now probably rioting in the streets.
If you, too, believed that Hillary was ahead in all the polls, may this help you to understand what people have been saying about the bias of the mainstream media.
So cheer up. Pot was legalized in several more states!
