Last Day For Walgreens

Thursday was the last day of business for the Walgreens at 14th and Broadway in Sacramento. I picked up some items, notably pricey eye vitamins, for cheap. 

Inner city drug stores, which flourished in the 90s in Sacramento, have weakened as homelessness, shoplifting, and the omnipresent Amazon have pressed in on them in recent years. First, Rite Aid on Alhambra, and now Walgreens. And not just Sacramento- I understand Safeways have closed in San Francisco. 

May the deterioration stop.

Big Oopsie

Well, that’s a strange sight; never seen it before. Jasper and I were walking past as traffic stopped for a freight train passing by, heading north in the majestic way they do from the old Southern Pacific rail yard into Midtown Sacramento. Then the train slowly came to a stop. After a short time it reversed, and headed back to the rail yard. It was as if they forgot to take something. Maybe a purse or a laptop, or rail cars full of purses or laptops; maybe a conductor or some oil or piles of lumber. Just a big Oopsie.

The Blame

The blaming is fast and furious regarding the fires in Southern California. One focus concerns the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, and whether the water distribution systems could have been better-prepared. 

The LA Times article here describes a very-Californian, three-way, Catch-22 that impaired better water distribution: 

1.) A number of water projects that might have helped with putting out the fires have been delayed, due to high costs, aggravated by the demands of environmental compliance; 

2.) The people of Malibu, Topanga Canyon, and nearby areas have resisted paying higher water rates to fund these water projects because they already pay high water rates. What the local people really want is a slower pace of development, in part, because faster development increases fire dangers. 

3.) Poor water distribution gives the locals the leverage they need to slow down development. Thus, there is no pressure from the locals to improve water distribution even as the infrastructure decays with time. Danger slowly creeps upward. 

Probably what would help would be an external fund, maybe run by the state, to help accelerate water projects in very-fire-prone areas to completion. I'm sure there are plenty of places where improvements should be made. 

Please note, better water distribution helps only at the margins. There is no municipal water system in the world that would suffice to stop or even slow down these Santa-Ana-wind driven fire tsunamis. Still, more water would have helped firemen save houses at the edges of the fire. 

I think people need to stop heaping blame on the politicians; particularly state-level politicians like Gavin Newsom. The hard decisions are not made at his level. Try Los Angeles County instead. Assigning blame here is really nuanced - a classic case of systems failure. In some ways, these fires remind me of the sinking of the Titanic. Everywhere you look, you'll find earnest, slightly-blinkered people doing their very best. Just like with the Titanic. 

One nice thing about government in California is that the politicians really do listen to the voice of the people, as expressed through their Neighborhood Associations. Sometimes, though, the righteous, self-governed people get things wrong, and that's when the trouble starts:

The lack of water has been a concern at both the city and county levels, and has come under scrutiny since the wildfire broke out Jan. 7. L.A. city officials, for example, have scrambled to explain why the 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir was left empty for repairs.

But thousands of pages of state, county and municipal records reviewed by The Times show the disaster was years in the making. Red tape, budget shortfalls and government inaction repeatedly stymied plans for water system improvements in parts of the county like Malibu and Topanga outside the city of L.A. — including some that specifically cited the need to boost firefighting capacity.

...Plans to build tanks that would have provided more than 1 million gallons of additional water storage in fire-ravaged Malibu and Topanga were left on the drawing board.

Replacements of “aging and severely deteriorated” water tanks were postponed, according to county records, along with upgrades to pumping stations and “leak prone” water lines in the two communities, whose water system is run by the county’s Department of Public Works.

A plan to build a new connection to draw water from a neighboring water system during emergencies has also been delayed for years.

...In 2019, the county compiled a new “Priority Project List” that included several action items left over from six years prior. The 13 upgrades would have cost about $59.3 million, and all but one was scheduled to be complete by September 2024.

One of the projects considered most essential, according to city of Malibu records, was a planned connection to the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District that the county estimated in 2019 would cost about $4.1 million.

...The lack of progress on many of the plans has been driven in part by residents’ opposition to potential increases to their water rates, already among the highest in the county. Ensuring compliance with environmental regulations can also take years, according to Pestrella, the county’s public works chief.

Anti-development sentiment has been an especially limiting factor in Malibu, where Pestrella said the city has at times used insufficient water access as an excuse to restrict new construction. 

“The community is not demanding it,” he said when asked why so many projects have failed to move forward.

“They’re not pro-development. They’re still utilizing the water system as a way to restrict development in Malibu. That’s the bottom line. That’s why it’s not happening at the pace it could happen at.”

No better way to end this post than with "The Blame," from "Titanic - The Musical."

 

Say Farewell To Existential Dread With Tylenol

Existential dread is quite a thing. It's a common reaction to viewing works of Surrealist art. In my case, I was feeling uncomfortable (as I should), rewatching David Lynch's "Rabbits" (2002) on YouTube. 

Reading further, I was surprised to learn that existential dread can be treated with Tylenol. Don't let Surrealism make you uncomfortable! Let it float over and past you, like some of the floating headlands in Salvador Dali's Cadaques beach scenes. Remain serene despite the mental challenge! Say meh to David Lynch!:

"Pain extends beyond tissue damage and hurt feelings, and includes the distress and existential angst we feel when we're uncertain or have just experienced something surreal. Regardless of the kind of pain, taking Tylenol seems to inhibit the brain signal that says something is wrong."

Randles and colleagues knew from previous research that when the richness, order, and meaning in life is threatened -- with thoughts of death, for instance -- people tend to reassert their basic values as a coping mechanism. 

The researchers also knew that both physical and social pain -- like bumping your head or being ostracized from friends -- can be alleviated with acetaminophen. Randles and colleagues speculated that the existentialist suffering we face with thoughts of death might involve similar brain processes. If so, they asked, would it be possible to reduce that suffering with a simple pain medicine?

 

 

My favorite scene in "Eraserhead." "They're new!"

 

“This Was The Eighties!”

 

Today, I returned to being a substitute teaching assistant, helping supervise school lunch and recess at the Montessori School, Capitol Campus. It was fun to see these kids again after a month’s interruption for the holidays: transitional kindergartners (TK), lower EL (grades 1-3), and upper EL (grades 4-6). Recess and lunch is different in some ways than I remember from my childhood, but some aspects remain timeless. 

First up was TK lunch. The kids were brought into the lunchroom in cohorts. Hand sanitizer was provided to clean hands on the go. Many of the lunch food items were sealed in plastic pouches of great durability, and difficult for a young child to open. Some of the kids handed over the pouches for me to open, and I was barely able to do so, resorting to brute force. The kids were amused by my facial expressions. (One advantage older folks have over the youngers is having better faces for making faces.) Conversation ensued. Several kids pointed to pepperoni packets to register their approval of spicy food. One kid used celery sticks to make convincing tusks for a walrus impression. Good times. 

Afterwards, the older kids came for lunch – I think upper EL. I was stationed at the tables just outside the lunchroom. There was a girls’ table, with one girl getting her hair braided by her friend. Lots of shifty eyes over there, with kids surreptitiously hitting each other when they thought no one else was looking. At a nearby guys’ table, someone spilled milk, which dribbled down the sock of one of the guys. Suddenly a student raced out of the lunchroom, paused, spit up, and then threw up a bit. “Are you OK? Why did you throw up?” I asked. He looked back to the lunchroom, turned back to me, and said, “It was too loud in there.” I found this explanation to be completely baffling. An inner ear thing? Who knows? He quickly left. I did what I could to clean up the mess. I was glad for the hand sanitizer in the lunchroom. 

After my own lunch, it was time for the best part of the day, TK recess. The littles are so imaginative; they are barely tethered to reality. Always a good time with them. 

But first, it was necessary to watch a couple of YouTube videos to get into spirit for recess. The kids stood in a circle and mirrored the movements of the dancers in the videos. The first video was the “Gimme That Garbage!” video (see above). Inspired by the music and the street scene in the second half of the video, one of the girls exclaimed “This was the Eighties!” (Ah, the remote past.) 

At recess, music poured out of a couple of portable speakers. The kids danced to their favorite tunes. Today, their favorite songs were “Bad Blood” by Taylor Swift, and “Believer” by Imagine Dragons. 

I tried hard to watch the kids and foresee accidents before they happened. There were two banged knees today, so I was not completely successful. At one point, I intervened when a girl was screaming for help while sliding backwards down the slide. I was embarrassed: they were playing a melodramatic game where the girl played a daughter-in-distress and another girl played the rescuing mother. 

Some of the boys started digging a hole, but were reprimanded for their choice of location, under a couple of basketball hoops. So they started digging elsewhere. I came to inspect their two-inch-deep hole, and asked, “So, are you digging for hidden treasure?” One kid exclaimed, “Yes! We are digging for amethyst! The deeper we dig, the more amethysts will float up out of the hole, until we finally reach (and holding out his arms as if grabbing a watermelon) The Great Amethyst!” Another boy had a different explanation. “We’re trying to reach the Earth’s Core. About a meter down we’ll reach the Earth’s Mantle.” I was impressed: geologists had left me with a different understanding of the mantle’s depth. 

Many of the kids were runners. One kid said, “I’m the fastest! Wanna see?” He then ran around the jungle gym. Another girl joined him for a second lap, and she outran him. So, I suppose you don’t have to actually outrun others in order to be the fastest. Another kid exclaimed, “I’m Scottish and I’m running even though my knee is hurt.” He had colorful bandages on his knee for proof, and I saw him zoom past several times. A third kid exclaimed “I’m sonic!” He did his best to be so. 

Reality tried to intervene, with a fire not that far from campus, along the American River, but the fire department got a quick handle on it. Then a girl roped me into her play, first as a zombie, and then as a pterodactyl. At first, I was the dinosaur hatchling and she was the mother; then vice versa. But I had to keep my eyes on all the kids; not just her. Time to roam. 

Afterwards, it was time for recess for the older kids, and Club M (after-school care until the parents picked up their kids). A lot of time standing around watching kids on the playground, and intervening if necessary. I’m still hampered by not knowing everyone’s names, but that will come with time. 

A kid came around who I had talked with last month: the new kid in school, without many friends, maybe a bit doleful. Last month we talked about space travel. Today, he started comparing our heights. I mentioned that I seem to be getting shorter with age; maybe some deterioration in the spine. He replied, “We start to die when we’re twenty-five years old. The number of replacement cells can’t keep up with the number of dying cells.” With that cheerful note he went to go sit down on the swings. 

So, a good day, tempered by memories of recesses past, long before the remote Eighties. Maybe someday school experiences like today’s will start to seem tedious, but not yet.

It Was A Roman Salute

Temporary Reprieve For TikTok

It's all quite confusing about TikTok remaining active. I'm glad; I love TikTok. Still, it's clearly illegal for it remain active. We're entering a new era where authorities make laws, and no one bothers to follow them. Which is good or bad, depending on the issue. But it is certainly strange.

Elizabethan Collar

Saturday night, January 18th. I’ve been at the emergency vet with Jasper. The pup somehow snagged a nail and it ripped. The vet removed the nail and bandaged it. The cone is called an “Elizabethan Collar”: I’m disappointed it’s not made of lace. 

When I got home, I tried to walk Jasper, but he balked. He had that vacant look of a disoriented animal. Maybe meds; maybe pain. I noticed Jasper showed no interest in the wound dressing, so I removed the collar and gave him food and water. Reenergized, Jasper went on a second walk - still short. 

Now, sleep and healing.

[UPDATE:  Jasper has been healing well.  I removed the dressing Monday evening.  Seriously well-done dressing.  These emergency vets are expensive.]

A Meteorite Hits The Earth

This is just cool!

 

DTs Will Impress The MPs