There’s a TV ad campaign that’s been around for years and poses the question,
What would you do for a Klondike Bar?
A Klondike Bar being a square of ice cream coated with a thin layer of chocolate.
The commercials suggest that people would do just about anything to get a Klondike bar, such as enduring painful removal of body hair with tape:
The Klondike commercials came to mind when I read a news story that made me want to ask folks:
What would you do for a selfie?
A selfie being a self-portrait taken with a smartphone camera and then uploaded to as many social media sites as possible in the hope that it will go viral and millions of people will see it and understand that you actually are pretty awesome after all.
I understand that some people will go to great lengths to get what they believe will be the perfect selfie.
But I think this guy went too far:
“An American tourist in Italy survived a fall into the crater of Mount Vesuvius after he tried to reach for his phone to take a selfie, according to Italian police and local officials.”
Yes, the Mount Vesuvius in Italy:
The Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano:
Mount Vesuvius, which in 79 A.D. erupted in one of the deadliest volcanic events ever recorded in Europe. For nearly two days, a violent cloud of hot gas and ash spewed out of the volcano’s main vent, blanketing the city of Pompeii in lethally hot volcanic material.
The Pompeii – a thriving city of around 12,000 people that was buried under millions of tons of volcanic material that killed more than 2,000 inhabitants.
You’ve probably seen images of their remains, like this:
And this:
And that selfie-craving American who fell into the crater of Mount Vesuvius?
He’s been identified as Philip Carroll, 23, from Baltimore, who was hiking on the famed volcano with his family earlier this month.
Now, hiking on an active volcano is definitely not something on my bucket list, but it is for some.
And it’s also a big business. You can get your tickets here:
And from many other websites.
So Philip Carroll and his family on Mount Vesuvius wasn’t unusual.
And Philip wanting a selfie on Mount Vesuvius wasn’t unusual. Hell, it was practically mandatory, wasn’t it?
What was unusual – or at least, unfortunate – was that when the family…
“…accessed the top of Vesuvius through a forbidden trail…”
Uh-oh.
Even I, who have never hiked in my life, know that when a trail is “forbidden,” there’s probably a good reason for it.
“When the family reached the top of the volcano…Carroll reached for his phone to commemorate being atop the 4,000-foot-high volcano.”
But Carroll fumbled the phone, and it fell into the crater of Mount Vesuvius.
“Instead of recovering the phone and snapping the perfect photo for Instagram, the man slipped and dropped a few feet into the crater.”
That “dropped a few feet into the crater” turned out to be 15 meters, which is 50 feet.
Even I, who have never fallen into a volcano in my life, know that 50 feet is a damn big fall, especially when it’s into a live volcano.
When the rescue team reached Carroll he was unconscious. At some point he woke up, the team extracted him from the crater and he was treated in an ambulance farther down the mountain. Carroll had suffered abrasions on his legs, arm and back, as was shown on Facebook:
Even I, who have never taken a selfie in my life, know that this image of Carroll is not a selfie.
“Carroll was taken into custody by the local police. It’s unclear what charges he may face.”
I’ve found no follow-up stories so we don’t know what charges, if any, Carroll faced.
Maybe…Selfie Stupidity? Might that be a crime in Italy?
Let’s ask the Italian polizia:
I’d say he made his feelings clear.
What the myriad news stories about Carroll also don’t talk about – but I will, here, for the first time ever – is that Carroll wasn’t the first to have a cell-phone-Mount-Vesuvius-related incident.
Remember those earlier pictures, the remains of Pompeii residents who in 79 A.D. were caught unawares and buried in tons of lethally hot volcanic material?
They were caught unawares because they were distracted.
And what do we keep on our PCs and laptops and whatever other devices except files that we care about?
Files that matter:
Work-related stuff, if you’ve been working from home or always work from home; and personal files – maybe medical records, insurance records, information about your home or car or warranties; plus your Christmas card list, birthdays list, restaurants you’d try again or wouldn’t.
For me – I have a lot of files including yearly lists of all the books I read and movies I watch; Word and Publisher and Excel docs from 700+ blog posts (plus hundreds of jpeg and png images); reams of other writing; projects I’m working on; family and other pictures…
I have a lot of files.
158,625 files, to be exact.
I know this because they suddenly became inaccessible, locked in my hard drive with no way to retrieve them.
Here’s what happened:
I walked by my computer one Tuesday afternoon and glanced at the screen. It was black – that was normal – except for one sentence across the top, which was not normal.
A sentence which struck terror into my heart:
ERROR: NO BOOT DISK HAS BEEN DETECTED OR THE DISK HAS FAILED.
What the hell? Just all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I’m in big trouble?
I was.
Panicked, I called my computer guy, whom I’ll call Computer Guy, or CG.
I read the sentence to CG and he said that yes – it sounded like my hard drive had failed. And as tech-challenged as I am, I knew what that meant.
No computer.
No internet, no email, no access to my files.
No nothing.
CG arrived the next afternoon, 24 agonizing hours later, and confirmed: My hard drive had failed.
He tried several approaches to access the hard drive and – no luck.
So he packed up my tower and hard drive, and took them home for additional testing. On Thursday – after yet another agonizing 24 hours – he confirmed:
I needed a new hard drive. He couldn’t access my files to download them to the new hard drive.
CG said he’d return to my home Friday afternoon with my tower and a new hard drive, get me set up and…
That was another 24-hour wait.
But I won’t keep you waiting:
CG said he could restore all my files.
All 158,625 of them.
For one reason.
I have…
I am not doing a commercial for Carbonite.
It just happens to be the backup system that my previous CG suggested in 2021.
But I am endorsing some kind of backup…
For the files you care about.
I resisted the idea at first – I didn’t want to spend the money, blah, blah, blah.
But because CG strongly recommended backing up my files, I subscribed to Carbonite and paid $75.59 for the first year.
At the end of the first year I considered not renewing – I hadn’t needed Carbonite in 2021, so why get it again?
Especially at the increased price of $83.99?
After wavering for awhile, I resubscribed for 2022.
Back to the present.
CG set up my computer to download all my files from Carbonite, and he told me it was going to take hours.
“You have a lot of files,” he said, shaking his head. “You have more files than some companies do.”
The file download lasted until Saturday morning, a clear demonstration that I have WAY too many files.
And it’s time to delete stuff I don’t look at and don’t need.
But my files? Yes, my files were back in place.
If I hadn’t had a backup system…
OK: I’ve used words like “agonizing” and “horror story,” and I know that’s overboard.
In the big scheme of life, these are computer files.
Not the war in Ukraine.
But in my life – and I’m betting in your life – we care about our files.
…when a 10-year-old girl is raped and becomes pregnant?
And she can’t receive the medical care she needs in her home state?
And adding to the tragedy is a guy named Jim Bopp:
Bopp is an Indiana lawyer, the general counsel for the National Right to Life, and he’s the author of a model law written for state legislatures considering more restrictive abortion measures.
Of the 10-year-old girl, Bopp said:
“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child…We don’t think, as heart-wrenching as those circumstances are, we don’t think we should devalue the life of the baby because of the sins of the father.”
According to Wikipedia, Bopp has three daughters.
I wonder if he would have been quite so righteous if one of his daughters had been a pregnant, 10-year-old rape victim?
If he would have told his daughter that she’d be forced to carry the baby to term, and ultimately understand “the benefit of having the child”?
The Ohio girl’s story is just the tip of the iceberg.
The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade is reaching into many areas, including a woman’s fallopian tubes.
In this article:
A doctor was quoted about “the horrible downstream effects of criminalizing abortion care.”
“Downstream effects”?
The article examples include:
An obstetrician delays inducing a miscarriage until a woman with severe pregnancy complications seems “sick enough.”
A lupus patient must stop taking medication that controls her illness because it can also cause miscarriages.
A sexual assault survivor chooses sterilization so that if she is ever attacked again, she won’t be forced to give birth to a rapist’s baby.
Let’s talk about the sexual assault survivor.
She is Julie Ann Nitsch, who provided this 2022 photo showing her in a hospital in Texas, before surgery to remove her fallopian tubes.
From the Associated Press article:
“Nitsch says she chose sterilization at age 36 rather than risk getting pregnant by another rapist.
“‘I ripped my organs out’ to avoid that, she said.
“Nitsch said she ‘saw the writing on the wall’ after Texas enacted a law last year banning most abortions after six weeks, even in cases of rape or incest. She said she sensed that Roe vs. Wade would be overturned, so she had surgery to remove her fallopian tubes in February.
“‘It’s sad to think that I can’t have kids, but it’s better than being forced to have children,’ Nitsch said.”
And Nitsch is not alone:
“Dr. Tyler Handcock, an Austin OB-GYN, said his clinic has heard from hundreds of patients seeking sterilization since the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision. Many choose this route because they fear long-acting birth control or other contraceptives could also become targets, he said.
“His clinic scheduled a July 9 group counseling session to handle the surge, and every one of his 20 patients who showed up to hear about the risks and ramifications of fallopian tube removal made an appointment to have the surgery.”
The Associated Press article details other “downstream effects,” but let’s turn here for the most obvious downstream effect:
The article quotes from a May 14, 2022 editorial in The Lancet, one of the world’s oldest and most well-known medical journals, which says in part that Supreme Court Justice Alito’s…
“‘…shocking, inhuman, and irrational’ draft opinion ‘utterly fails to consider the health of women today who seek abortion.’”
The Lancet also says this, loud and clear on the cover:
And it’s not just “Alito and his supporters” who will have blood on their hands.
It’s every person, female and male, in Congress, in state legislatures, judges and governors and local officials and their supporters, and people like Jim Bopp, who believe they – not we – should have control over our bodily autonomy.
Well, we know what we have to do:
Update: Caitlin Bernard is the Indiana obstetrician-gynecologist who provided the abortion for the 10-year-old rape victim.
She wrote an opinion piece for the July 22 Washington Post and summed up this tragic situation better than I ever could.
Dr. Bernard said, in part:
“Next week, the Indiana legislature will contemplate dramatically restricting abortion, as many states have done since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Lawmakers will debate the particulars of the law and thus the fate of my patients. They will debate whether to include an exception for rape, whether to require a child incest victim to testify under oath that her family member abused and impregnated her before she could access medical care, how sick someone needs to get before they will allow us to save her life, whether to allow a mother to spare her baby from the worst suffering, to spare herself from the unimaginable agony of watching her baby die in her arms.
“But they will never face my patients. They will never stand in their shoes or hold their hands. They will never know their pain. Legislators are the last people who should be in the business of deciding who gets medical care and who does not.”
I’ve got a thing for giraffes, as I talked about in my May 20 post.
That post was about the little gal on the right, Msituni (pronounced See-TU-Nee, Swahili for “In the forest”). She’s now five months old.
The giraffe on the left, Nuru, is grooming Msituni.
Msituni is liking it.
The image was taken last week in the East African habitat at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Because I felt like ending the week on a high note, I’m happy to say that now – thanks to human intervention and creative thinking – Msituni is thriving and doing all the things a giraffe her age should be doing.
She was about six feet tall at birth, will grow to around 14 feet tall…
…and she’ll eat up to 75 pounds of leaves a day.
When Msituni is three to four years old, she might start having babies.
But in the meantime, Msituni can be found frolicking with the rest of the giraffe herd in the Safari Park’s 60-acre East Africa savanna habitat…
On June 24, 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, it wasn’t enough for Justice Clarence Thomas (pictured) to know he’d helped eradicate a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy.
He couldn’t just sit back and say, “There! That’ll show ‘em!”
No, Thomas had to add his own two cents’ worth in his concurring opinion, according to this any many other articles:
“…that the justices ‘should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell’ – referring to three cases having to do with Americans’ fundamental privacy, due process and equal protection rights.”
In other words, says the article:
“…that the Supreme Court ‘should reconsider’ its past rulings codifying rights to contraception access, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.”
The article continues,
“The court’s liberal wing – Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – echoed concerns in a dissenting opinion released on Friday, writing that ‘no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.’
“‘The constitutional right to abortion ‘does not stand alone,’ the three justices wrote. ‘To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation.’”
The writer of this article:
Expanded on Thomas two cents’ worth:
“…Thomas wrote that the high court has a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in Obergefell vs. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriage, Lawrence vs. Texas (2003), which protects same-sex relations, and Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), which protects married couples’ access to contraception.”
Thomas wants to “correct the error.”
I wonder if Thomas feels that was about another Supreme Court landmark civil rights decision, this one from 1967.
Some background:
1958: Virginia residents Mildred and Richard met in high school, fell in love, and got married.
A few weeks later, local police raided their home in the early morning hours. Mildred and Richard were arrested, and charged with breaking the law. They pled guilty and were each sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended on condition that the couple leave Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years.
Their crime?
Mildred Loving was black and Richard Loving was white, and their marriage violated Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites a crime.
What crime?
The crime of miscegenation: a mixture of races especially marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another race.
Virginia wasn’t the only state with anti-miscegenation laws.
In fact, only nine states have never enacted anti-miscegenation laws: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Though Mildred and Richard had married in Washington, DC, their marriage wasn’t legal in Virginia.
The Lovings appealed their conviction to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which upheld it. They then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their case.
In 1967, in Loving vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the Lovings’ favor and overturned their convictions. Its decision struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law and ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
In 1967, the remaining 15 states with anti-miscegenation laws saw them overturned by Loving vs. Virginia – here’s a map, showing all 16 states in gray:
So, how about it, Justice Thomas?
Is Loving vs. Virginia one of those Supreme Court rulings that needs to be “reconsidered’?
Is Loving vs. Virginia one of those “errors” that needs correcting?
Oh, wait.
Silly me!
Of course you’re not – look who you’re married to!
The Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 and died in 1890.
In 1888 he wrote to his brother Theo,
“I can do nothing about it if my paintings don’t sell.
“The day will come, though, when people will see that they’re worth more than the cost of the paint and my subsistence, very meagre in fact that we put into them.”
And van Gogh’s paintings didn’t sell – there are stories of him selling “one” painting in his lifetime or a “handful” of paintings, a poor showing for an artist who created more than 850 paintings and nearly 1,300 drawings and sketches in an artistic career that lasted only 10 years.
No one, including van Gogh, considered him a successful artist.
So I hope van Gogh is smiling over the excitement this recent story is creating:
The image below on the right is an x-ray of the back of the image on the left:
The image on the left, according to the article is:
“…van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman, an 1885 study for a larger painting, The Potato Eaters, widely considered one of Van Gogh’s masterpieces.”
The image on the right “had been hiding in plain sight, inside a painting that had belonged to the National Galleries of Scotland for over 60 years.”
The “hiding in plain sight” image on the right is believed to be a van Gogh self-portrait, discovered by a conservator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art when she x-rayed Head of a Peasant Woman ahead of an exhibition – a routine step.
According to this article:
“…the x-ray showed ‘a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat with a neckerchief loosely tied at the throat. He fixes the viewer with an intense stare, the right side of his face in shadow and his left ear clearly visible.’”
Back to the Washington Post:
“Hidden under layers of glue and cardboard was another painting on its reverse – a portrait of a man in a hat with a scarf tied around his throat.
“‘I saw it then and there,’ senior curator Frances Fowle said. ‘It was a self-portrait by Van Gogh, on the back of our painting.’”
Why would van Gogh have painted something on the back of another painting?
“Van Gogh was known to reuse canvasses because of lack of money, and Scottish conservators believe that was the case here.”
Lack of money was also a reason van Gogh painted so many self-portraits – “no fewer than 35,” according to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which has examined the x-ray of the newly uncovered painting and deemed it “almost certainly” a van Gogh self-portrait.
Van Gogh couldn’t afford to pay artist models, so he painted himself, experimenting with colors and light and techniques, as in this self-portrait from 1887:
Van Gogh self-portrait, 1887, the Detroit Institute of Arts.
According to various articles:
“Van Gogh became his own best sitter, saying, ‘I purposely bought a good enough mirror to work from myself, for want of a model.’”
So what looks to be a major discovery was painted, and on the back of the canvas another image was painted to save money on canvasses. By an artist who frequently painted himself, because he was too poor to hire actual models.
And – an artist who gave many of his paintings and drawings to others, only for them to often throw away those gifts.
So, who’s the culprit who covered the self-portrait with cardboard and glue…
And why?
The self-portrait, says this Washington Post article:
“…had been covered in cardboard, most likely by Johanna van Gogh-Bonger [pictured], the wife of van Gogh’s younger brother Theo, in 1905, when she sent Head of a Peasant Woman to an important exhibition in Amsterdam.”
I’m imagining what was going through Johanna’s mind, how excited she was that Head of a Peasant Woman by her dead brother-in-law Vincent was going to be in an important exhibition!
Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, 1889
She turned the painting over, and there’s a…oh. “Is this another one of those self-portraits by poor old Vincent? And not even finished? I’ll just cover it up so it doesn’t distract from the good stuff.”
Johanna sent Head of a Peasant Woman to Amsterdam, and van Gogh’s self-portrait went unseen for over a century.
National Galleries of Scotland said its experts were looking at how to remove the glue and cardboard covering the self-portrait without damaging Head of a Peasant Woman.
The lost-now-found self-portrait x-ray image will be on view at the July 30-November 13 exhibition, A Taste for Impressionism, at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.
If all this excitement isn’t enough to make Vincent smile, I’ll add this recent story to the mix:
Van Gogh’s Fields Near the Alpilles (1889) was expected to sell for around $45 million at Christie’s Auction House May 2022 auction.
It sold for $51,915,000.
And it joins a list of van Gogh paintings that have sold for millions, including these top five, according to this 2022 article:
Irises; price: $53.9 million, 1987 A Wheat Field with Cypresses; price: $57 million, 1993 Portrait of Joseph Roulin; price: $58 million, 1989 Portrait de l’artiste Sans Barbe; price: $71.5 million, 1998 Portrait of Dr. Gachet; price: $82.5 million, 1990
Vincent, I’d say there’s no doubt that people feel that your works are…
“…worth more than the cost of the paint and my subsistence.”
On June 24, 2022 when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, it wasn’t enough for Justice Clarence Thomas (pictured) to know he’d helped eradicate a woman’s right to her bodily autonomy.
He couldn’t just sit back and say, “There! That’ll show ‘em!”
No, Thomas had to add his own two cents’ worth in his concurring opinion, according to this any many other articles:
Thomas wrote,
“…that the justices ‘should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell’ – referring to three cases having to do with Americans’ fundamental privacy, due process and equal protection rights.”
In other words, says the article:
“…that the Supreme Court ‘should reconsider’ its past rulings codifying rights to contraception access, same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.”
The article continues:
“The court’s liberal wing – Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – echoed concerns in a dissenting opinion released on Friday, writing that ‘no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.’
“‘The constitutional right to abortion ‘does not stand alone,’ the three justices wrote. ‘To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation.’”
The writer of this article:
Expanded on Thomas two cents’ worth:
“…Thomas wrote that the high court has a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in Obergefell vs. Hodges (2015), which legalized same-sex marriage, Lawrence vs. Texas (2003), which protects same-sex relations, and Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), which protects married couples’ access to contraception.”
Thomas wants to “correct the error.”
I wonder if Thomas feels that was about another Supreme Court landmark civil rights decision, this one from 1967?
Some background:
1958: Virginia residents Mildred and Richard met in high school, fell in love, and got married.
A few weeks later, local police raided their home in the early morning hours. Mildred and Richard were arrested, and charged with breaking the law. They pled guilty and were each sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended on condition that the couple leave Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years.
Their crime?
Mildred Loving was black and Richard Loving was white, and their marriage violated Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which made marriage between whites and non-whites a crime.
What crime?
The crime of miscegenation: a mixture of races especially marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another race.
Virginia wasn’t the only state with anti-miscegenation laws.
In fact, only nine states have never enacted anti-miscegenation laws: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Though Mildred and Richard had married in Washington, DC, their marriage wasn’t legal in Virginia.
The Lovings appealed their conviction to the Supreme Court of Virginia, which upheld it. They then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear their case.
In 1967, in Loving vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in the Lovings’ favor and overturned their convictions. Its decision struck down Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law and ended all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
In 1967, the remaining 15 states with anti-miscegenation laws saw them overturned by Loving vs. Virginia – here’s a map, showing all 16 states in gray:
So, how about it, Justice Thomas?
Is Loving vs. Virginia one of those Supreme Court rulings you think should be “reconsidered’?
Is Loving vs. Virginia one of those “errors” that needs correcting?
Sometimes the profanity is used in combination with other words, such as “New York Fucking City” and “Patty Fucking Hearst,” which is a variation, but not a particularly creative one.
Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly.
So, what is Ginder’s book about?
His website says the book is:
“…a poignant, funny, and slyly beguiling novel which proves that, like democracy, family is a messy and fragile thing…”
“Smart, funny and tear-jerking, Let’s Not Do That Again shows that family, like politics, can hurt like a mother.”
So, another (yawn) dysfunctional family. Add in politics (yawn), so they’re even more dysfunctional.
But still, I could go for “funny” and “smart.” And “tear-jerking” can be good.
Those qualities are all good – if they’re not lost in an incessant sludge of profanity.
Profanity is the last refuge of the truly ignorant.
I stopped listing the profanities above after page 44 because that’s where I stopped reading. And that was more than enough.
It appears that many read Ginder’s book and thought it was great, like the raves quoted on Amazon from reviewers at publications I respect including Publishers Weekly, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
In fact, the Washington Post was one of a number of raves that compared Let’s Not Do That Again to Veep, a TV show that ran for seven seasons from 2012-2019.
I did a blog post about Veep in 2019, in which I also lamented its excessive use of profanity – “That just tickles my twat!” was one of many examples I cited – so yes, I can see the comparison.
If I’ve come off sounding like a major killjoy, wet blanket and all-around prude – so be it.
And guess what? I don’t care.
Life is too short to waste my time on books like Ginder’s that show such a lack of skill, style, and command of our wonderful language.
(A few weeks ago I did a post about raw sewage and trash from Tijuana contaminating San Diego beaches. The mess in this post isn’t from a foreign source – it’s local.)
San Diego County has beautiful beaches, and in the summer they’re a prime destination for residents and visitors.
On July 4 that influx of people expands, enjoying the water and sand and sun all day…
And fireworks at night, including the Big Bay Boom:
And the next morning our beaches look like the picture at the top, and like this:
There’s even an official name for it:
The “Surfrider Foundation” in the above image is a nonprofit that:
“…is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s ocean, waves and beaches, for all people, through a powerful activist network.”
For a number of years Surfrider has hosted the July 5 Morning After Mess Beach Cleanup Series:
And every year – unfortunately – there’s always plenty of litter to clean up on San Diego’s beaches. For July 5, 2022:
Volunteers – bless them – turn out every year to clean up what others leave behind. This year 429 volunteers picked up the better part of a ton of trash from the seven beaches with the highest concentration of beachgoers and reputations for post-Fourth of July trash.
Who are those volunteers?
They’re all sorts of people of all ages, including families:
And they’re willing to spend their time and energy cleaning up after others, changing our beaches from dumping grounds back into attractions.
What were those volunteers finding?
Much of the litter is single-use plastic – bags, drink cups, straws, utensils, plates, containers – mixed with food packaging, abandoned toys and clothing, flyaway balloons, fireworks, grills, chairs, broken boogie boards, shoes, sunglasses, backpacks, metal scissors, action figure parts, and food waste, food waste and more food waste, like this:
And – to my surprise – this:
This surprised me since smoking isn’t allowed on most San Diego beaches. Yet according to this headline:
Cigarette butts are the number one thing the Surfrider volunteers find every year.
And lifeguards and law enforcement – understandably – are too busy to enforce the no-smoking law.
So some beachgoers abandon their trash, despite exhortations from the environmentally concerned, from the media and others to “pack out what you pack in” – in other words, bring garbage bags, pack up your trash and take it home.
Take some responsibility, for $@!%#$@* sake!
So, who’s leaving their trash behind…
And why?
It turns out that wiser heads than mine (of which there is a countless number) have been studying people who litter for many years. And since I was curious about the who and the why, I did some online reading of articles like this:
From this and other articles I learned that while lots of people wouldn’t dream of going to a beach and leaving their trash lying on the sand – including me – at the same time, lots of people – including me – have gone to a movie theater and done this:
Me, a litterer?
Litter is litter, whatever its location.
The theory here is that “the decision to litter is based on the actions of other people – for both good and bad. If an area is already highly littered, people are more likely to add more litter, while the cleaner an area already is, the less likely people are to disrupt the scene by littering.”
We go to the movies and know other people are going to leave behind their drink cups and popcorn containers and candy wrappers, so we do it, too.
Another theory has to do to with the location of trash cans:
“…the distance to a trash receptacle is a strong predictor of littering, so the farther away you are from a trash can or a recycling container, the more likely you are to litter.”
Now, San Diego beaches have many trash cans:
Plus, early on the morning of July 4, the Clean Beach Coalition puts many of these trash and recycling boxes in place:
So proximity shouldn’t be a problem.
But as the day goes on, if those containers look like this:
Some people decide it’s easier to leave their trash where it lays; the trash containers are all full, so why bother?
Another theory:
“People are more likely to litter when they feel no sense of ownership for parks, walkways, beaches, and other public spaces.”
“It’s not my beach so it’s not my problem” – right?
Conversely, another theory is that “some people leave litter in the outdoors as a way of marking territory or claiming ownership – a kind of ‘litter as graffiti’ behavior.”
Then there’s the theory that some people feel a sense of entitlement: “Someone will clean up after me.”
And who knows? Maybe that goes all the way back to our earliest experiences of loading up our diapers, and someone else taking care of our mess.
So there are lots of theories, but here’s a fact:
Litter wasn’t always the gargantuan problem it is today. Once upon a time, if you tossed an apple core out the car window…
Animals would eat it, or it would decompose, and no harm done.
But then came this:
And that was a relatively recent development:
“Production of plastics leaped during World War II, nearly quadrupling from 213 million pounds in 1939 to 818 million pounds in 1945.
“Come V-J Day, however, all that production potential had to go somewhere, and plastics exploded into consumer markets.”
“Thanks to plastics, newly flush Americans had a never-ending smorgasbord of affordable goods to choose from. The flow of new products and applications was so constant it was soon the norm. Tupperware had surely always existed, alongside Formica counters, Naugahyde chairs, red acrylic taillights, Saran wrap, vinyl siding, squeeze bottles, push buttons, Barbie dolls, Lycra bras, Wiffle balls, sneakers, sippy cups, and countless more things.”
And consumers considered plastic disposable – it went out with the trash, along with that apple core and squeeze bottles and Wiffle balls and, and, and…
It took years to understand that…
“‘Unlike other materials, plastic doesn’t break down,’ said Alex Ferron, manager of the Surfrider San Diego chapter. ‘Unlike paper and aluminum, where it’s breaking down and becoming inert, plastic breaks up. So while you might not be able to see it, after some time it gets smaller and smaller, and all throughout the cycle of doing that, it’s getting eaten. So it’s finding its way into our food chain, into fertilizers, it’s getting absorbed as rainwater. It’s truly everywhere.’”
Even cigarette butts, said Ferron, contain “acetate plastic fiber.”
Of course we all know all of this.
And we do this anyway:
Still, there was a note of hope after the July 5 Surfrider’s Morning After Mess Cleanup:
“‘Many of our volunteers remarked that the beaches seemed cleaner than in previous years, which is a great sign,’ said Ferron.”
Then she added, correctly:
“‘Despite that, we cannot lose sight of the fact that even one piece of trash on the beach is one piece too many.’”
Perhaps we’ll reach never reach that point of not “even one piece” of trash on our beaches. And your beaches. And our/your parks and sidewalks and streets and highways.
But perhaps someday – and soon, I hope – there won’t be enough trash left on San Diego beaches for Surfrider volunteers to make another one of these:
I’m a faithful Dear Abby reader – I often think her advice is spot on, and now and then, it even applies to a situation I’m dealing with.
This time, however, I thought her advice was awful. Egregiously awful.
And if the letter writer takes Abby’s advice, I believe the writer will regret it.
Here’s the letter:
Dear Abby: My husband died recently. I have been approached by a much younger man for a sexual relationship. I want to, but I feel he is too young. I’m 61, and he’s 37, the same age as my son. We have been friends for years, and I am unsure if I should change the relationship. I see no future in it except occasional sex. Should I drop it or consider the possibilities? – Thinking About It in Ohio
Here’s Abby’s response:
Dear Thinking: Before dropping it, carefully consider the “possibilities.” At 37, this person is not a kid, he’s an adult. Something like this happened in my family years ago. A close friend of a relative’s son announced he had fallen in love with her. It took her a little while to adjust her thinking, but the result was a very happy marriage.
You dogged it, Abby.
Here are the most important words in the writer’s letter:
“for a sexual relationship.”
Abby, you somehow missed this, and instead went off the deep end about someone and so-and-so and yada yada they lived happily ever.
But the man wasn’t talking about happily ever after.
He wants a sexual relationship.
It might be for a night, a month, a year, multiple years.
But it’s a sexual relationship.
And instead of giving the guy credit for being honest, you encouraged the woman to have delusions of walking down the aisle and all that can precede it.
But…the man said “a sexual relationship,” and he meant exactly that.
Not cuddling and cozy conversation after sex. Not waking up together in the morning. Not sharing coffee and kisses before you start your separate days.
No romantic dinners in candle-lit restaurants where he says “I love your sense of humor,” admires her intelligence and enumerates the many things they have in common.
Not sending each other short, sweet “Thinking of you” texts with hearts and happy faces. Not romantic getaways to a tropical beach and sunset walks.
And definitely not this:
There’s a name for what the man wants, and even an acronym: FWB.
And there are rules for FWB.
Lots of rules.
And lots of articles about the rules:
“So you’re great mates who just both happen to be single at the same time, why not add a bit of ‘no strings attached’ fun into your friendship?
“In order for a friends with benefits (FWB) relationship to blossom, experts and our readers agree that there needs to be a strict set of rules. Here we discover the meaning of a friends with benefits relationship, how to find a pal and how to do it orgasmically well.”
A sampling of the rules:
“No warm and fuzzies. Before getting into FWB make sure you’re 100 percent fine with having sex without anything deeper.”
“Stay safe. You are not obligated to be exclusive in a FWB so it’s crucial to stay safe and STD-free.”
“Keep in mind what this is. You are not building an intimate relationship, but rather just having fun and enjoying one another physically.”
Abby, here’s the advice you should have given the woman:
Dear Thinking: You’ve been invited to have an FWB relationship – friends with benefits. Believe him when he says he wants a “sexual relationship.” Don’t dress it up, put a ribbon on it and pretend it’s something else. Don’t hope he’ll fall in love with you. And don’t think he’ll change, or worse – that you will get him to change. Go online and read about FWB and the rules entailed. Then, if you truly believe you can live within those parameters – go for it.
Let’s say I walk into a department store in San Diego, where I live, and shoplift a $10 lipstick.
And I’m caught.
Here’s what can happen to me if I’m convicted:
For a misdemeanor act of shoplifting – which this is, because the value of what I stole is under $950 – the penalty may be six months in a county jail, a $1,000 fine, or both a fine and jail time.
That’s the law.
It doesn’t matter if I think the law is stupid.
It doesn’t matter if I tell the security guard who apprehended me that I’ll give the lipstick back.
It doesn’t matter if I tell the judge I’m really, REALLY sorry.
A fine, jail time, or both.
That’s the law.
Now instead of shoplifting a $10 lipstick…
Let’s say I steal more than $8 million taxpayer dollars in a COVID scam, like these people did, as recounted in this December 2020 article:
“The federal government has seized $8.4 million in pandemic-related loans obtained by a family running a fake ministry in Orlando who then tried to spend some of the money on a $3.71 million house in Disney World’s Golden Oak neighborhood, according to court records.”
The family was dad Evan Edwards; mom Mary Jane; daughter Joy, 36; and son Josh, 30:
The name of their fake ministry: ASLAN International Ministry, which doesn’t appear to have a website, but was getting attention on the Ministry Watch website in December 2020.
Ministry Watch is an independent evangelical Christian organization whose purpose is to review Protestant ministries for financial accountability and transparency, and to provide independent advice to Protestants considering making donations to them:
“A so-called international ministry based in Florida who didn’t appear to do anything ministry-related allegedly obtained millions by defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program, federal authorities say.
“CNBC reports that U.S. Secret Service agents seized more than $7.5 million from accounts at Bank of America and another $868,000 from First American Trust from ASLAN International Ministry. The information came from a civil forfeiture complaint filed in U.S District Court in Orlando, FL.”
So, this sounds like a story with a happy ending – not for the Edwards family, but for taxpayers.
The family had gotten $8.4 million in pandemic-related loans under false pretenses and now the government had taken it back.
How did the Edwards family get the $8.4 million? According to the Orlando Sentinel article:
“It began after Joshua Edwards, a vice president of ASLAN International Ministry, applied for $6.91 million for a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan, or PPP, according to a federal complaint signed Monday by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Andrejko.”
Remember the Paycheck Protection Program?
It became a law on April 24, 2020, and its purpose was to help businesses, self-employed workers, sole proprietors, nonprofit organizations, and tribal businesses continue paying their workers and survive the economic hardship caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
That was April 24, 2020, and I’m betting Josh Edward started filling out the fraudulent application same day.
As this April 2022 article put it:
“The Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to be a lifeline to small businesses during some of the darkest months of the pandemic – $800 billion distributed from April 2020 to May 2021. And as we now know, some $80 billion of those taxpayer dollars ended up in the wrong hands or misspent.”
Josh Edwards…
“…submitted documents that painted a picture of a successful Orlando-based ministry that employed 486 people on a monthly $2.76 million payroll and had revenue of more than $51 million in 2019. He submitted IRS forms and a cover letter from an accountant that showed summaries of ASLAN’s bank accounts.”
The Edwards family waited, but not for long – in 2020, the government was in a hurry to get the money to people, and people were anxious to get it.
The big day came: First Home Bank notified Josh Edwards that ASLAN International was eligible to receive more money than he had asked for: a total of $8.4 million.
Josh applied for $6.91 million and we taxpayers gave him almost $1.5 million more than requested.
But wait, you’re thinking.
This all happened back in 2020. The story has a happy ending. The government got our tax dollars back, and the Edwards are all rotting away in prison, right?
Wrong.
The Edwards fraud story was resurrected in this July 1, 2022 NBC article:
The article goes into great detail about the family’s fraud, up to September 17, 2020 when the Edwards family, in their Mercedes, was pulled over by three Florida Highway Patrol cars.
Then we get to the point:
“…more than 18 months after the Florida traffic stop, authorities have yet to charge any member of the Edwards family with a crime.”
The NBC article says,
“The Edwards did not challenge the seizure of the $8 million in loans, all of which was recovered by the Justice Department.”
“The federal government has taken no action against the Edwards since then, according to a search of public court records.”
Let’s go back to the April 2022 NPR article I cited above. This was an interview with Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, who said:
“We actually have now had over 1,200 indictments in total in our investigative work – about 900 arrests and almost 500 convictions.”
And those arrests and convictions make headlines, like this one from March 2022:
William Sadler (pictured) fraudulently got a measly $1.7 million in Paycheck Protection Program money. He “pleaded guilty to federal fraud and money laundering charges,” and was facing “a maximum sentence of 82 years in federal prison.”
And the Edwards family…
Gets nothing?
No…
No…
No dressed in an orange jumpsuit, facing a judge in a courtroom…
No…
No.
Here’s the $8.4 million-dollar question:
Actually, I have two whys.
Why aren’t all four Edwards in prison?
And why did NBC reporters revive this story more than 18 months after it happened, when there is nothing new to report?
There is no new development making headlines anywhere else that I could find. The few current stories I did see, like this one…
…were all just a rehash of the NBC July 1, 2022 story.
Why now?
I contacted the three NBC reporters and ask, but haven’t heard back from them.
Heaven forbid that an NBC news reporter should respond to an NBC news consumer.
I did find items of interest in a link in the NBC article that went to this 2021 article:
It sems the Edwards family had reappeared in Canada, both in person:
Evan Edwards and his daughter, Joy, pray for people at a drive-thru event in an undated video that has since been removed.
And online – this is dated September 12, 2021:
The Roys Report article says:
“…previous contributors to ASLAN International have received an email purporting to be from ‘Edwards Family Ministries’ with little text besides the subject line: ‘948 salvations so far! It’s been a year of Harvest in 5781! Happy New Head of the Year 5782 – PTL!’”
The email included links to the YouTube videos (above) depicting members of the Edwards family asking for money. The videos were “quickly taken down,” according to NBC.
The Roys Report goes on to say:
“Edwards Family Ministries’ address at the end of the email matches the one for Aslan International Association in Alberta, Canada.”
Here’s what that looks like:
“And while the Edwards aren’t listed anywhere for the Canadian organization, their Florida nonprofit uses the Canadian organization’s information as their own.”
Here’s where the Florida nonprofit link takes us:
And on this page is a link to an “Annual Report” dated 4/28/22:
The document is signed by “Joshua Evans.”
The Roys Report closed with this:
“News 6 in Orlando reported last year that the family was being investigated by the Edmonton (Alberta) Police Service in addition to the U.S. Secret Service.”
It appears the Edwards family – in 2020 – was being investigated by Canadian police as well as by the U.S. government.
But when NBC contacted U.S. authorities for its July 1, 2022 article, all they got was this:
“A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida emailed NBC News that the office declined to comment.
“Roy Dotson, the national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator for the U.S. Secret Service, which led the investigation, said, ‘Due to the fact that this is an ongoing investigation, the Secret Service cannot provide any additional information related to this case at this time.’”
In summary: From September 2020 when the Edwards family was pulled over in Florida – in their Mercedes – to now is 21 months.
The Edwards family’s Aslan International Association in Alberta, Canada is still in operation, now blessing – and bilking – unsuspecting Canadians.
They’re still filing annual reports as Aslan International Ministry, Inc.
Law enforcement in the U.S., and possibly in Canada, are still investigating.
I drink a lot of Gatorade so it’s always on the grocery list.
Recently my husband returned from the supermarket with another supply, and he mentioned that these bottles were different from the bottle in the fridge.
They were:
In the fridge: bottle on the left, 32 ounces; new: bottle on the right, 28 ounces.
Different packaging but similar in size.
Less content.
Higher price.
It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed I was getting less of a food item in the same or similar-size container.
Years ago, coffee came in a one-pound can (below, left), but today that almost-the-same-size can hold 11.5 ounces of coffee, plus air:
And canned tuna – that used to be six ounces, then it shrank to five, and now it’s 4.5 ounces “NET WT” or “Net Weight,” and four ounces “DR. WT” or “Drained Weight”:
The can size has not changed appreciably.
So I’d know about this for years – the practice of food companies keeping the container size the same or similar, reducing the contents, and charging us the same, and often more.
The food companies believing that we consumers were/are too stupid to notice.
I’ve known, and so have you, but I hadn’t known the name for this.
Until I read this article:
It’s called “Shrinkflation.”
“Shrinkflation” was coined back in 2015 by British economist Pippa Malmgren in this tweet:
This article…
…defined shrinkflation as:
“…the practice by which companies reduce the size or quantity of a product while the price of the product remains the same or slightly increased.
“In some cases, the term may indicate lowering the quality of a product or its ingredients while the price remains the same.”
While the Associated Press article called it…
“…the inflation you’re not supposed to see.”
Shrinkflation isn’t out there in plain sight, like gasoline prices – nobody can miss those, especially here in California. Here’s what I’m paying in San Diego County:
And how about Mono County, CA:
No, shrinkflation doesn’t look like that.
Instead, shrinkflation looks like this. The quotes and images are from Reddit:
The Associated Press article listed a number of other examples including “…Cottonelle Ultra Clean Care toilet paper, which has shrunk from 340 sheets per roll to 312…”
…and goes on to say:
“…shrinkflation appeals to manufacturers because they know customers will notice price increases but won’t keep track of net weights or small details, like the number of sheets on a roll of toilet paper.”
“Companies can also employ tricks to draw attention away from downsizing, like marking smaller packages with bright new labels that draw shoppers’ eyes.”
Like I said – these companies think we’re stupid.
Here’s something else these companies have in common:
“No comment”:
When PepsiCo was asked why the 28-ounce Gatorade was more expensive than the 32-ounce, “it didn’t respond.”
“Kimberly-Clark – which makes both Cottonelle and Kleenex – didn’t respond to requests for comment on the reduced package sizes.”
“Proctor and Gamble didn’t respond…”
“Hain Celestial Group didn’t respond…”
And what’s our response to shrinkflation, besides anger?
The internet abounds with articles like this one:
That offer suggestions like these:
Compare the unit price of similar products to see which is the best price. The price per unit is usually really tiny on the item or the shelf price tag.
Substitute store brands for brand names. Store brands are usually the last to shrink.
Stock up if you can find the older, larger sizes.
Use store apps and loyalty programs for discounts.
These are all valid ideas, but consider the practical application.
Many people grocery shop on their way home from work. They’re tired, they’re hungry, and all they want is to get their stuff, get the hell out of the store and go home…
Standing in a crowded supermarket aisle, comparing unit prices that are 2.3¢ on one brand and 3.2¢ on another brand…moneysaving, but not real practical.
We consumers are not stupid, but we’re often rushed, distracted, and exhausted.
From personal experience, I can verify that clipping coupons (or downloading them), while time-consuming, is worthwhile. My husband always has coupons in hand for trips to the supermarket, and he always saves us money. It might be $3 or $10 or $28, and we gladly take it.
And if companies are making more profits off us from shrinkflation – well, we’re a capitalist country and that’s how we roll.
I’m not being cavalier about it – just realistic.
As a guy in the above KENS5 TV story put it:
“‘I’m asked very often, is this an illegal practice?’ said Edgar Dworsky of ConsumerWorld.org. ‘It isn’t. They comply with the law. They put the net count or the net weight right on the package.’”
So, shrinkflation isn’t illegal.
I guess all we can do is do what we can do to deal with shrinkflation.
Well, perhaps there is one more thing:
Go on social media and gripe about it. Post pictures and comments like the Reddit examples above. It may not change anything, but you might feel better for it.
It’s no news that our country is extremely divided. We often hear, read and see evidence of that, like this June 25, 2022 article:
So on this Independence Day holiday, let’s take a break from all that.
Let’s take a journey across the U.S. to celebrate that for all our divisiveness, our 50 states still have a lot in common.
Like…officials.
I’m not referring to officials, as in politicians.
I’m referring to something useful. Interesting. Straightforward.
Like…
This guy:
Meet the big-eared bat, the official state bat of Virginia – so designated in 2005.
Virginia, and all states, have a list of “officials” – the expected ones like official state flags and state seals and state mottos. Such as:
And all states have unexpected officials, as I’ve now discovered.
Like Nebraska – it has an official state drink:
Officially designated in 1998, Kool-Aid was developed in 1927 by Edwin Perkins and his wife Kitty of Hastings, NE. The original Kool-Aid had six flavors, but today you can slurp up dozens, including sugar-free.
And Alabama? Check out their official state crustacean:
This became official in 2015, and it’s OK if you call brown shrimp by its other names: brownies, green lake shrimp, redtail shrimp, golden shrimp, native shrimp, and summer shrimp.
And how about Idaho? No surprise here: an official state vegetable:
And a museum to go with it. The potato became the official State Vegetable in 2002, and the museum pre-dates that – it opened in 1988, and is in Blackfoot, ID.
Now, you may have noticed I’ve used the word official a number of times. But how does something become an official something?
State legislatures and the governor declare them so.
And it’s not just a bunch of politicians standing around one morning before the session starts, saying, “Hey – we don’t have a state pickle! Let’s get one!”
There’s a process involved.
Sometimes the process is started by residents who could benefit from having their item designated official. You don’t think the idea for a state vegetable in Idaho just came out of nowhere, right?
Or, the request might come from schoolkids, perhaps as a class project to show how government works – all those committees and subcommittees and meetings and…
Or how the government doesn’t work.
Or maybe that official idea comes from you, because you think your state has a lack and you aim to fill it. If Alabama has an official state crustacean, shouldn’t New Mexico, too?
Whoever the citizens are and whatever their motives, they must contact their state representatives to make a request for a bill. If the representative has the time and inclination and agrees, they’ll draft a bill and introduce it.
The bill winds through the state’s legislative process and if both houses approve the bill, it’s sent to the governor for signing – and she/he can veto all or part of the request. (“An official state pickle? Seriously?”)
If the governor eventually signs, then the bill is enacted, and that entity is proclaimed a new state symbol.
You may be wondering – as I am – don’t state politicians have better things to do than debating their state’s official dance?
They do, but they’d rather discuss the Square Dance vs. the Funky Chicken.
And considering our current state of politics…perhaps that’s best.
Back to what our 50 states have in common.
According to the July/August 2022 issue of Food Network magazine, people in all 50 states have a “food specialty”:
The article didn’t specify Bowl of Red What, and considering that it’s Texas, perhaps that, too, is best.
Here’s the list from the magazine of all state food specialties, in case you were wondering about your state:
Another commonality among our 50 states?
All states have weird landmarks, according to this article:
In Virginia, for example, we’ll find Foamhenge:
This landmark is a life-size, styrofoam replica of England’s Stonehenge with 14-foot-tall foam-stone pillars, built in 2004.
And, according to this article:
Every state has an obscure fact.
Such as: In 1986, Delaware became the home of the annual World Championship Punkin Chunkin Competition, the sport of hurling or “chucking” a pumpkin by mechanical means for distance. The devices used include slingshots, catapults, centrifugals, trebuchets and pneumatic (air) cannons.
Alas, in 2016 injuries and lawsuits resulted in a suspension of the competition, so if you’re looking for a nice, gently used trebuchet like this one:
Just head on over to Delaware.
No what-do-our-states-have-in-common list would be comprehensive without mentioning that all 50 states have some weird laws – at the state, county and city level. This recent article was helpful:
From this and other articles, I’ll pick three states – how about Connecticut, West Virginia and California?
Connecticut:
A pickle must be able to bounce. Well, that’s at least one of the tests used to determine whether or not a pickle is legally fit for human consumption. Pickles dropped one foot should bounce, according to the Connecticut Food & Drug Commission.
West Virginia:
If you see roadkill in West Virginia, it’s completely legal to take it home and cook it for supper. The state law says that wildlife “killed or mortally wounded as a result of being accidentally or inadvertently struck by a motor vehicle” is fair game (get it?). If you’re in need of recipes, Jeff Eberbaugh’s Gourmet Style Road Kill Cooking (pictured) was a runaway success in West Virginia when it was published in 1991.
California:
Because my home, California, is the state with the highest population, and perhaps the greatest amount of weirdness, I figured it deserved recognition for three laws, not just one:
It’s illegal to walk a camel down Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs between the hours of 4pm and 6pm.
In Los Angeles, you’re not allowed to wash your neighbor’s car without their permission.
In Arcadia, peacocks have the right of way in all driveways and roadways:
Our journey is coming to an end, and I’m getting hungry after all this research.
So to complete our list, how about…
A Best Sandwich!
And the July/August 2022 issue of Reader’s Digest just happened to provide, as the magazine put it, “the 50 greatest ways to fill two slices of bread (or just one, or a bun, or a biscuit…).”
I’d barely turned to the first page and I was already salivating:
All 50 sandwiches looked/sounded so good, I came darn close to gnawing on the magazine.
And as far as that official pickle, even with all my research, I found no state with this…yet.
But eating pickles is something else our states have in common – Americans consume about 20 billion pickles every year. We celebrate National Pickle Day on November 14; a number of states have Pickle Festivals; and no Pickle Festival would be complete without a… Pickle Queen!
1952, Mount Olive, NC.
This has been a fun journey, discovering that our 50 states have so much in common.
And all this called to mind the lyrics of a song from the musical Gypsy:
We have so much in common It’s a phenomenon. We could pool our resources By joining forces from now on.
(If you read this and start thinking, “This only affects San Diego,” think again. This involves your federal tax dollars.)
If you haven’t been to San Diego, chances are you’re still familiar with this local icon, the Hotel Del Coronado:
Located right on the beach, Hotel Del opened in 1888 and has been the setting for many movies including the wildly popular 1959 Some Like It Hot, starring (below, left to right) Tony Curtis, Jack Lemon and Marilyn Monroe:
Hotel Del is a popular place for visitors both for the hotel and the beautiful beach. You are cordially invited to visit Hotel Del.
But alas, lately – not it’s beach:
Here’s why:
In fact, beaches from Coronado south to the Mexican border were closed due to sewage contamination– see the red dots:
And unfortunately, this is not a one-time-only event.
It’s routine.
2021:
2020:
2019:
2018:
I could go back further, but you get the idea.
Raw sewage from Tijuana moves north through the Tijuana River Valley across the U.S./Mexico border and empties into the Pacific Ocean. Currents carry the sewage north, closing beaches along the way:
This is a big problem, and not just for the San Diego area:
This is a local problem: San Diego is a top U.S. travel destination, and visitors spend more than $11 billion here annually. Our beaches are big part of the attraction…
…but if visitors can’t enjoy the ocean, they’ll spend their money elsewhere. This impacts every local business, from restaurants and hotels to gas stations and surfboard rentals – both the owners and the employees.
This is a health problem: For people and the environment: In a 2020 60 Minutes story, an interviewee cited for Leslie Stahl some of the contaminants in Tijuana sewage:
“…fecal coliforms, drug-resistant bacteria, benzene, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium medical waste, and DDT, which has been banned for years in the United States.”
This toxic cocktail is combined with assorted trash including plastic and tires, dead animals and sometimes a dead human:
All this is pouring into the Pacific Ocean. But it’s not just swimmers and surfers and birds and other wildlife who can be harmed.
Let’s say you live in Ohio, and you’re treating yourself to a dinner at a nice restaurant. You order the grilled tuna, flown in fresh this morning from the West Coast:
This is also a national problem: Millions of your federal tax dollars have been spent trying to fix the Tijuana sewage problem, much of it coming from the Environmental Protection Agency.
It’s not fixed, and this is still happening:
What, exactly is the cause of this problem?
What I learned from my research is that there’s no “exactly,” because it’s a combination of factors:
Too many people in Tijuana overloading an inadequate sewage system.
Promises made, like this one from 2018:
And promises broken.
As for the money spent – there’s been a lot of that, but obviously to little effect.
Like this state funding in 2017:
And upcoming federal tax dollars:
Here are just a few more examples of federal tax dollars spent on the Tijuana sewage problem:
1995: $157 million from IBWC (International Boundary and Water Commission) 1997: $239 million from EPA 1998: $42 million from EPA 2011: $93 million from EPA
The money keeps flowing.
And so does the sewage and the contamination.
In mid-June, just as the tourist season had gotten underway, that contamination closed beaches from Coronado, location of Hotel Del, south to the Silver Strand and down to Imperial Beach:
And it looks like the problem is worse than anyone realized, according to this “new testing”:
“Beach closures that were once thought of as largely a wintertime occurrence now appear poised to become a year-round phenomena in San Diego’s South Bay.”
“It’s because the ocean is more polluted than previously thought. A spate of recently shuttered shorelines followed a May 5 rollout of a new DNA-based water-quality testing system nearly a decade in the making.”
So, better testing = more beach closures.
The article continues:
“For years, environmental regulators thought sewage pouring over the border from Mexico was largely the result of heavy winter rains that flushed polluted runoff and wastewater through the Tijuana River channel into the estuary in Imperial Beach.”
“However, recent studies out of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Stanford University have identified a defunct wastewater facility in Tijuana as a major source of the pollution. San Antonio de los Buenos sewage treatment plant at Punta Bandera is estimated to be dumping as much as 35 million gallons of raw sewage a day into the Pacific Ocean.”
Here’s another map, this one indicating the San Antonio de los Buenos sewage treatment plant:
Let’s stop and think about this:
“As much as 35 million gallons of raw sewage a day into the Pacific Ocean.”
How much raw sewage is that, per day?
Picture an Olympic-size swimming pool:
The pool is 164 feet long, 82 feet wide, and 6 feet deep.
It holds about 660,000 gallons.
Now think about 53 Olympic-size pools full of shit and trash and the occasional dead body being poured into the Pacific Ocean…
Every day.
Sickening, isn’t it?
And it makes people sick – again, from the June 14, 2022 Union-Tribune:
“The [beach] closures are necessary to protect beachgoers from dangerously high levels of bacteria and viruses, according to county public health officials. Swimmers who ignore the restrictions could be at risk of diarrhea, fever, respiratory disease, meningitis and even paralysis.”
Going back to the map, above –
“When ocean currents move northward, referred to as a ‘south swell,’ they can carry plumes of feces and other pollution as far north as Coronado. Such conditions are prevalent in the spring and summer, according to health officials.”
So why doesn’t Mexico get their shit – literally – together and fix the problem?
Because they don’t have to.
Sewage from Tijuana is flowing out of the city so their problem is solved. If their system causes problems in another country – the U.S. – that’s not Mexico’s problem.
And what’s the U.S. going to do?
Declare war on Mexico?
So: Will this $630 million from the EPA fix the problem?
If so, it won’t be anytime soon:
I’d say “moves forward” is way overstating the progress, when all the EPA is doing at this point is asking for public comments.
As though the public hasn’t been commenting about Tijuana sewage problems since the 1930s, according to this article:
“Water pollution has been an ongoing concern on this side of the border since at least 1934 [almost 90 years ago], when the International Boundary Commission was instructed by the U.S. and Mexico governments to cooperate in sewage mitigation.”
The public comment period is “now open and will end on August 1, 2022” according to the EPA website:
And then, says the June 17 KPBS article:
“Once public input has been incorporated, officials will select an option with an eye toward starting the design process in the fall.”
Here are the three options the EPA is considering, with my public comments:
In addition, I’ll offer some great comments from the June 19 San Diego Union-Tribune:
I love the word claptrap: “absurd or nonsensical talk or ideas.”
“Bummer Summer” indeed.
Now, that’s an idea I can get behind.
Update: The beaches from Coronado south to Imperial Beach finally reopened on June 21:
That’s the good news.
The bad news?
Officials “hope” this EPA $630 million plan “can be completed by 2030.”
Until then, this will keep happening:
A plume of sewage empties into the Pacific Ocean and flows north from the city of Tijuana, upper left.
And so will this:
Update: Well, the beaches were reopened.
Until this, from the June 30 San Diego Union-Tribune:
I Hate Houseguests 