Monday Meanderings - 8.31.2015

My current book at Learning Ally is The Train to Crystal City, by Jan Jarboe. Most of us are aware that during WWII thousands of civilians of Japanese descent were uprooted and spent the duration of the war in Internment Camps. What is perhaps less known is the extent of this imprisonment, and Roosevelt's government prisoner exchange program called “quiet passage.”

From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas,  way down in the tip of South Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German and Italian immigrants and their native-born children. Unlike the other camps, Crystal City was the only family internment camp during World War II. 

During the course of the war, thousands of prisoners from Crystal City, including their native-born children, were exchanged for other more important Americans—diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries—behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany.

It's a sobering read. During the hysteria following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hoover's FBI agents swept through Japanese communities on the West coast and German and Italian communities on the East coast and branded tens of thousands foreign-born men (and some few women) as "dangerous enemy aliens" and imprisoned them without regard to their constitutional and legal rights.

Families of these detainees were left without any means of support and most "voluntarily" requested internment, including of course, their American-born (therefore American-citizen) children. Once interned, the families were fair game for repatriation, and thousands were exchanged for Americans. The challenge in reading this book is the pronunciation of the Japanese and German names!

One side of a phone conversation that took place in our Chuy's during the Hatch Green Chili Festival, between the restaurant manager and headquarters:
RM: "These Bacon-Wrapped Pork Rellanos on the Hatch Special Menu are a disaster!"
(District Manager responds)
RM: "They won't hold together! The kitchen's having to throw away more than we are able to serve!"
(District Manager responds)
RM: "I know that you approved them, but the ones you were served were some of the ones that held together. Of course they didn't serve you any of the ones that came apart!"
(District Manager responds)
RM: "Well, just so you know, I hate them. Hate, hate, hate them!"

I took advantage of a sale and bought a small propane grill a while back. Lean grilled meat is high on our list of approved foods, so I'm slowly working my way through some grilling options. I'm no master, but so far I've tried chicken, pork chops, steak and fish. So far, so good, except fish sure comes apart in a easily! Did you know that that there is such a thing as a fish spatula, which has an enormous flat surface? Got to get me one of those.

We have had a couple of Google self-driving cars in ATX for a while, but I have mentioned in actuality they each carry two passengers that serve as observers and backup. Now Google is getting ready to turn loose some totally autonomous vehicles on the Austin streets. No passengers, no backup. I guess they think that if they can navigate Austin traffic the project is good to go. Unlike the populated cars, these will be easier to spot.

My question is - if it is self-driving, and nobody is in it, just who decides where it is going to go? I mean does the car think, "I'm going to cruise some auto dealerships today and see if I can pick up a hot convertible?" IMWTK.

The Deadliest State

A common mantra when we are at the Lake Cabin is, "Watch out for snakes." It's not an empty caution; over the years a significant number of copperheads and rattlesnakes have been spotted (and dispatched, when possible).

If you live in Texas, snakes are a common threat. Other regions have their own problems, like sharks, and bears, and alligators. We read news items from time-to-time about the dangers that lurk in our woods or waters, and they seem to get an inordinate amount of attention. There are things out there that can sting us, bite us, eat us or otherwise ruin our day.

I came across a series of articles in the Washington Post a while back that went into some detail about animal-caused deaths, breaking out the statistics from the CDC on such fatalities in the U.S. between 2001 and 2013. On average, and rounded to the nearest whole number, here's how many Americans were killed by various animals each year over that period:

Sharks killed about 1 person per year between 2001 and 2013.

Same for alligators and bears, for that matter.

Sharks, gators and bears combined killed half as many people as snakes (6 deaths per year) and spiders (7 deaths per year).

Non-venomous arthropods - various ants and other terrible non-poisonous bugs - kill 9 people each year.

But this pales in comparison to the deaths caused by nature's silent, stealthy killers - cows. Yep, a CDC report from a few years back found that cows killed about twenty people a year in the mid-2000s. That makes cows about 20 times as lethal as sharks.

Going beyond cattle, dogs about kill 28 people per year, and other miscellaneous mammals, like horses, pigs, deer and the like, kill 52 (none of these numbers include deaths due to vehicle collisions; the CDC figures that the animals are usually not the aggressors in these situations).

But the number 1 animal killers on an annual basis are... bees, wasps and hornets, together responsible for 58 deaths each year - mostly due to anaphylactic shock after a sting.

So, statistically speaking, you're 58 times more likely to be killed by a bee than you are by a shark, or a bear. The article stressed that annual deaths from all animal causes combined (about 200) are just an infinitesimal fraction of total deaths - less than 0.008 percent of all deaths each year. I feel better already.

But wait! There's more. The article also published a series of maps showing the states with the highest rates of mortality by dogs, bees, snakes, spiders and other bugs and mammals. Here's the summary map:

The exact numbers are in another chart, not shown, but it's easy to see the states with the most deaths. California and Texas have a lot of people, so they also have the highest number of animal fatalities - 212 and 356 respectively, since 1999. That's 356 Texans dead at the hands (well, not actually) of some animal or insect.

That seems a disproportionate number since Texas has about 2/3rds as many people as California, but experienced about 150 more animal-related deaths since the late 1990s. This is easily explained by pointing out which state harbors the most silent, stealthy killer cows.

There were more maps that showed how each state fared for the various categories -  dogs, bees, snakes, spiders and other bugs and mammals, etc. -  and they all had one thing in common. Texas lead the nation, or was near the top of every list.

We Texans pay a price to live in the Great State of Texas.

Monday Meanderings - 8.24.2015

Enjoyed a couple of days of coffee-on-the patio weather; rare this time of year. And as a bonus, received about an inch of rain during that time frame. The triple digit days are not completely gone, but I think we are on the down hill side of summer.

Barb and I spent a couple of days exploring a new part of California's Pacific Coast Highway. Thus far we have driven just over half of this scenic route - 338 of 655 miles (we have visited portions of it multiple times). This time we focused on northern California - Sonoma and Marin counties. We ranged as far north as Point Arena Lighthouse and then south through Muir Woods and San Francisco to San Jose, our departure point.

Point Arena Lighthouse was interesting. Located on the point of mainland US closest to Hawaii, it was in service from 1870 until the late 1970's (though it is still the site of modern navigation equipment in use today). The 1906 earthquake destroyed the original light house, but it was rebuilt and if you are really, really energetic, you can climb to the top of the present-day 115 foot tower. I'm told the view is spectacular.

The optics for the lighthouse was a set of three 1st Order Fresnel lenses, weighing more than 6 tons. The assembly floated in a bath of mercury and was rotated by a 250 pound weight that slowly dropped the length of the lighthouse. For many years, this weight had to be hand-cranked back to the top every 75 minutes!

We stayed in Bodega Bay, a little coastal village situated on a bay named by Peruvian explorer Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra. Interestingly, there is no evidence that Bodega y Quadra ever visited the bay itself, but he did stay at a Holiday Inn close by. 

The village has a bit of  fame as the filming location of Alfred Hitchcock's movie "The Birds." There is even a tour of the specific filming locations, but we settled for eating at the Tides Wharf restaurant that "burned" in the film itself. There we noticed posters promoting actress Tippi Hedron's annual visit to Bodega Bay later in the Fall. Apparently this is a regular event.

The Lake Cabin

Just over 50 years ago, my parents leased a lot on the shores of Possum Kingdom Lake, a reservoir on the Brazos River located primarily in Palo Pinto County Texas. The lake, a project of the Brazos River Authority and the Works Progress Administration dating from the 1930s and early 40s, has an area of approximately 17,000 acres with 310 miles of shoreline and holds 750,000 acre feet of water. Sometimes.

At first, if you wanted to spend the night on the property you slept in a home-made pop-up camper that we hauled all over the western United States during my high school years. About 1965 or so, Mom and Pops purchased a surplus one-room railroad section-hand cabin and moved it onto the lot as the nucleus of what has become a multi-room, multi-bath, multi-bed cabin with a wrap-around porch that looks out over the water. Sometimes.

I say sometimes, because the cabin is actually on Veal Creek, just about a half-mile from where it joins up with the Brazos River and the lake proper.  Since this is Texas, in times of drought the creek drys up early and shrinks to a narrow channel, or disappears altogether. During those times, the nearest water can only be seen a half-mile or more to the East. In times of prolonged drought, there is no water to be seen at all.

The water always comes back eventually, and the presence or absence of water out front is not what draws us to the Cabin. It became the gathering place for the family. We gathered there for Christmas, and Labor Day, 50th Anniversaries, and all points in time between.

In the summer, we sat under swamp-cooler air conditioners (or went and jumped in the water) and in the winters we gathered around the wood-burning Franklin stove, shivering until someone discovered that it was a lot colder in the cabin than it was outdoors.

We came as youngsters, and we brought our babies. We come now as Seniors and bring our grandchildren. Recently, my grandson asked me how long I had been coming to the lake and I answered, "All my life." That's not quite true, but I was able to state truthfully that his father had been coming all his life. Here we are in the summer of 1967.

And here are his children in the summer of 2015, nearly 50 years later, in almost the exact same spot.

We came with our friends, and we came from our studies.

In the late summer of 2011, we thought we had lost the cabin. In fact, one report included it in the more than 200 homes and properties destroyed by a series of wildfires in the region. And the fire did come right up to the cabin itself; that dock in the background of the 1967 picture above burned, as did some other outlying structures, but thanks to the efforts of volunteer firemen, the cabin itself was untouched.

It's been more than a decade since Mom and Pops passed on. My sister and her family now make it possible to continue the traditions of gathering at the Lake. Lord willing - and it's a certainty that the creek is not going to rise - we will gather at the Lake Cabin again this Labor Day. And as a bonus, this time there will be water.

Monday Meanderings - 8.17.2015

There was a time when one spent a free day cleaning out the garage, or going through closets, weeding out the Goodwill items. It is a sign of the times that such a day is now spent cleaning out the iPhones and iPads. Updating the operating system, killing all those apps that you once thought neat but haven't opened in 2 years, moving all the icons because there are holes where those deleted apps used to be, going through all the remaining apps to get rid of unwanted notifications and location tracking. Phew! What's this? Apple just released the next update to the operating system? Aargh!

Did you know that if you are gawking when you drive across the Golden Gate Bridge it is very possible that you will sail right past the exit that leads you straight to your destination in San Jose? If this happens the alternative is to wander a bit in downtown San Francisco. Okay, wander a lot. However, unlike the trip when we tried to rely on the Blond GPS lady, the Google Maps phone app led us out of the maze with ease and without a single "Recalculating."

I can't say as much for printed Google directions. On our drive from Fresno to Sonoma County, carefully following those printed turn-by-turn directions resulted in our being abruptly dumped deep into the California Maritime Academy campus in Vallejo. Go figure.

Based on the paltry dried husks the pecan tree dropped earlier in the summer, it appeared that this would be an off year, pecan-wise. That's normal - pecan trees usually produce in every-other-year cycles. However, every morning the squirrels sit in the tree, gnawing on green pecans and dropping the husks onto the roof.

I think they do it just to annoy me - there's plenty of tree not overhanging the roof where they can sit and drop shells, but they much prefer right over my head. And there are a lot more pecans up there than I expected. Unless the squirrels eat them all.

American Statesman headline of the week: "Sex assault suspect arrested after holding tortoise ransom." I'm not even going to speculate.

And you will be glad to hear that in Austin it is now illegal to use bullhooks on your elephants. I love this town.

Things that go beep in the night

We've all experienced the beep in the night. For some reason the middle of the night is the time that the smoke detector battery chooses to inform you that it's dying. There's no ignoring it. Just when you decide that it's not going to go off again and you are about to drift back to sleep, it beeps. Again. Persistently. Endlessly.

Barb told me the other morning that we had one going off (there are some benefits of having a hearing loss), but couldn't tell which room it was coming from. So, one goes and stands in various rooms and listens attentively, hoping to catch a beep, and close in on the source. Good luck with that.

We finally narrowed it down to the bonus room, so I swapped out the battery in the smoke detector there and a few hours later was rewarded with another beep! Even with a brand new battery. I've had smoke detectors to go bad and beep regardless of battery freshness, so I disconnected the battery and put "smoke detector" on the shopping list.

The next morning I heard another beep. Definitely not the un-powered smoke detector. More standing, more listening. Aha! The house alarm system keypad. Had to make a trip to the electronics store for that battery, but now I knew I could put the battery back in the smoke detector. All was well until yet another series of beeps the next evening! What else is there? Ah, the carbon monoxide detector! Which begs the question - was this the source of all the beeps in the first place.

At any rate, there is nothing else in that room that can go beep. Maybe.

All that reminds me of some friends who were on a trip some time back and had just settled into their motel room, only to hear a mysterious and persistent beep from somewhere in the room. They searched high and low to no avail and finally called the front desk.

A maintenance person came and checked out the room smoke detector, which was not beeping, and then helped our friends search for the source. They all but destroyed that room looking for the origin of the noise and finally gave up. Stuffing toilet paper in their ears to block out the noise, they spent a restless night.

The next morning they expressed their displeasure to management and got comped for the room, along with fervent apologies for the restless night. As they were getting into their car to leave, our friend opened her purse - to discover that her new, still unfamiliar phone was beeping about an unanswered message!

What would your response be to that revelation? Go back and apologize? Pay for the comped room? Or quickly drive away, culprit phone in hand.

Monday Meanderings - 8.10.2015

The tree saga(s) continue at our house. First, there's the humongous stump left from the biggest fallen tree on Memorial Day weekend. I called a guy who specializes in grinding stumps. He said he could turn it into a big pile of sawdust with about a day's worth of grinding and the majority of a $1,000 bill. Think I'll plant a bush in front of it. Or maybe take up chain-saw art and make a bear, or a longhorn steer, or a bus out of it.

Next, I got a call from Austin Energy. Since they had already come previously to repair power lines because of my fallen trees, they want to be proactive about some other trees near their lines. There are at present two smaller trees adorned with green ribbons (trim) and two with red ribbons (take 'em down). The good news is that they will haul away everything they cut down, and the better news is that the biggest tree is actually on my neighbor's property.

And then, we returned from a trip last week to find... you guessed it. More downed tree limbs. Not the pecan this time - but a fig tree on the side of the house.

 I just wish it had come down a couple of weeks ago when it was full of figs that I couldn't reach without a ladder. Fig season is over and now the stupid fig tree falls over! It's not safe to be a tree in our yard, I've decided.

Last summer Barb and I visited Mt Rainer, and I reported then that - after signing up for the tour - we were given instructions about what to do if Rainier decided to turn from an inactive volcano into an active one. This summer we spent a couple of days on the Northern California coast and noticed an abundance of signs with this message:

One sees these sorts of signs when you drive up and down the San Andreas Fault. By the way - the instructions are the same for Tsunamis as for volcanoes. Get to higher ground. Yeah, right.

Rental car on this trip was one of those key-less vehicles. They hand you a fob and as long as you have it in your pocket you can start the car. If you lose it, you have a big paperweight on your hands.

Monday Meanderings - 8.3.2015

Well, we avoided triple digits in ATX for as long as we could, but last week the temps reached that milestone. All in all, it hasn't been too bad, but now the heat index is around 6,000 degrees, so staying inside in the cool is the order of the day.

The Men's National Soccer Team finished 4th in the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament - games they were supposed to win. Maybe we should have played the Women's National Team, instead.

I was killing time at the Starbucks in the Domain, our hoity-toity shopping district while waiting for nearby Dillard's to open, and checked my phone to log onto the WiFi. I counted 34 nearby establishments offering wireless hotspots.

Guess what didn't run into me this week:

The Google self-driving car and I crossed paths. While the car is doing all the work, there are actually 2 occupants at all times,  manning all the instrumentation that records how everything is going. The most noticeable feature of the car is the spinning camera gizmo on the top. When you get close, you also notice the little sensors on all four corners, but they look more or less  like rear-view mirrors.

For the few blocks our paths were the same, it looked to be doing just fine; it even slowed down and moved over for a bicyclist.

There was an article in the paper about an Austin guy "Everesting" - on a bicycle. The feat consists of riding a bike uphill for a total gain of 29,000 feet in elevation. Of course, in Austin, we don't have 29,000 feet of continuous up, so the dude accomplished this by riding up Big View Drive, in the River Place area 70 times. And then of course, down the hill 70 times, but those don't count.

Among the stringent rules, set forth by an Australian web site, is the requirement that it has to done in one attempt - no stopping and starting - so Andy Coulbeck, a 51-year-old software developer originally from Leicester, England started out at 5 p.m. Saturday night and finished about 7 p.m. Sunday evening. Friends brought him food and water and kept him company through the wee hours of the morning. Gotta love this town.

And here's an ad I saw in the Sunday paper:

I'm guessing that overeating is not one of the True Causes covered in the Seminar.