Right Angle: Backstage (06-22-2021)

There was talk prior COVID-19 that some of the western counties of Virginia would go to West Virginia. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would want to be part of WVA, but yes, please.
Sadly, I think the discussion is dead on the vine.

For several years I served as a companion to a lady with Alzheimers. Her son hired me to be his eyes, and to give his mom one on one attention and companionship on a daily basis that he was not able to provide at the nursing facility where she lived. The nursing facility wasn’t high-end, and only provided the basics of care. The atmosphere was sterile and cold. When a new facility was opened he was able to move her into it. This place was almost like a luxury resort hotel – beautiful environment and interior design. The two facilities were a night and day difference as far as infrastructure, but the nurses and aides were all the same, many of whom migrated between the facilities on a regular basis, fired from one, only to be hired by another, back and forth in endless rotation. Which is the main reason some families, if they could afford it, hired private care providers for their mom or dad.

Anyway, what prompts me to write is to say that while it is very difficult to see a loved one disintegrate before your eyes into someone almost totally unlike the mother or father you knew, to experience them not knowing who you are, and being in a state of what seems to be oblivion, it might be of some small comfort to consider that the pain and loss you feel is much worse most likely for you than what they experience. While caring for my lady, I often wondered if she might not be in another world, unfathomable to all but her, but perhaps not a bad place to be.

She was much like an infant – I fed her, washed her, assisted her in the bathroom, changed her soiled underclothes, groomed her, talked to her, read to her, listened to music with her and sometimes, to my delight, she would suddenly begin to sing along with a song – Ave Maria was her favorite. In her youth she had loved to dance, and sometimes she and I, while she was still able to walk, would slow dance while listening to old 40’s music. After she passed, almost 3 years later, another family, having observed me with her, asked me to serve in the same capacity with their mother. I was happy to accept as their mother had a sweet and cooperative nature and was less compromised. I stayed with her until she passed.

What this experience taught me was not to be afraid of the advanced aging process. It is a natural part of the cycle of life. Families find it difficult and heart-rending to watch a once vibrant, engaged and active person become diminished, gradually or suddenly returning to a state of helplessness, but for the person who is in that state, it may only be a prelude to the next stage that awaits us all. Providing compassionate and comforting care for the Alzheimer’s sufferer is ideal, but my sympathy and empathy is for the family. They are the ones who suffer most.

Question: How much is the Covid 19 vaccine costing the government?

160,000,000 vaxxed so far? Times what? $20.00 for 2 shots? $40.00? More? Is everyone administering shots working for free? Or are they being paid as well? 3 to 6 billion? Peanuts compared to the cascade of rescue packages totalling trillions. 6 billion? Its a rounding error!

Bill’s correct. California’s idea of power generation is embodied in the 1962 completed San Luis Reservoir , 45 min away from my house. Possibly the last large dam built in California.

And “The El Camino” isn’t even a freeway. Up here, we drive “on the 80’s”. I880, 280, 680, 580. Great Imagination, Sacramento.

The Marmalade

This weekend at the Bacchanal:
Guess Who, The Who

Bill, if you do decide to move to my state (Nevada), you must learn to pronounce it Nevada, not Nevahda or you’ll be instantly recognizable as an out-of-stater.
And Scott, I too, choked up when Bill read that quote by Winston Churchill. A man the likes of which we’ll never see again.

Since the November 2020 elections, I have been talking about “Peaceful Divorce”. All the rumbles of civil war 2.0 are misplaced I think. What did we see when Trump was elected back in 2016/2017? We saw blue states and regions enact their own “sanctuary” policies. They shielded illegal immigrants and legalized recreational drug usage. They sued the new administration and enacted local policies contrary to the administrations policy agendas. The defund the police movement and the autonomous zones, etc….. When the 2020 elections turned the way they did, I immediately begin to predict that red states and regions would do the exact same thing that blue states and regions had done. We would begin to see local 2A laws enacted. I said we would begin to see red states enact abortion and election reforms laws. I predicted we would see red states start to take up border security measures. And this is EXACTLY what we are seeing! Peaceful Divorce is well underway. And since both red and blue regions are doing this, I predict that in 5 or 10 years it will become glaringly obvious that we are indeed two very different nations who are NOT coming together in unity. What does this look like and how does it play out?

Even if people moving from say California to Texas in search of jobs were blue, just the act of leaving the toxic environment they’re from and moving to places where people are good-natured and humanity is not considered a scourge upon the earth elevates them out of their depression to realize life is good. And people who think life is good don’t (typically) vote left.

That method for “producing” electricity is not new. It was actually considered a fairly elegant, low cost solution to peak energy demands. There are pump solutions with water turbines; compressed air solutions that use air compressors and small air turbines among others.
It is not done due to lower cost of energy at night, it is done from an available energy standpoint. As a very simplistic example: (completely made up numbers)
Power plant out = 1000 kW continuous
Peak demand from 10am to 3pm is 1200 kW,
Minimum demand is 800 kW from 11pm to 4 am.
But my plant is still producing 1000 kW from 11 pm to 4 am. It has to go somewhere. So pump water up to a tower between 11pm to 4 am. Sufficient quantity and head capable of producing 200 kW for 5 hours.
At 10am, release the flow and add 200 kW of capacity to allow for the peak.
This is net neutral (with some losses) but is better than reducing the output of the power plant.
Now, this is supposed to be done with an overall plan of increasing capacity as base demand increases.
The base demand is where CA and many others have failed.

I predict this formula changes a bit when everybody is charging their electric cars at night………..

Oh without a doubt. This process is many decades old and just demonstrates further the fundamental flow of everyone having an electric car. We can’t even keep up with the organic growth required of our power systems due to increased usage by the average individual plus an increasing population.
Since 2000 we have 50 million more people in the US (almost 20%), but they also consume a significant percentage more electricity. So our power needs are likely already 40-50% more in the last two decades. We do not have 50% more generating capacity. Add in even a small percentage of EV at night and every summer and winter would turn the US into a rolling blackout state every night. It’d be like the Dominican Republic.

In California, we can’t depend on Sun, or Wind and now Rain (for hydroelectric production or Los Angeles grass growing) as California is entering a drought the likes of which I havn’t seen since the 5 year drought starting in 1975. We have less water to drink or irrigate crops and we won’t build dams to hold drinking water. Salt water is intruding into our aquafers along the coast as we suck up more from the ground. We’ll need desalination plants, but to power those we need a lot of electricity. And we love shutting down our nuclear plants too! Hey, we have a surplus! Let’s give it away to landlords to cover their losses from a Gavin Newsom shelter in place order that somehow extended beyond the “Fifteen Days to bend the curve”.
California is screwed. And progressives did the nasty.

The ME Gulf states have desalinization plants, and that technology has made leaps in the past 2 decades. Why CA is not at the forefront of that is a total embarrassment. But, Solyndra! Hey!

I’m hoping Bill or their video editor caught this as well, but if not, Bill’s Mic levels are WAAAAAY too hot, giving feedback and a bit of an echo. Sounds like he’s in a tin can.

Yeah, Bill has mic issues on a regular basis. If you’re listening on a decent system you can hear him banging on his desk to emphasize points, he needs either a decent lapel mic or a shock isolated desk mic. His mic is often too hot or too low. I don’t know what’s up with that.

My father would have been 99 this past June 3. He was in WWII in the European theater came in on DDay plus 2. Medic until he gave someone penicillin for a fairly minor wound, and watched the guy die on him due to allergy. He quit then, feeling responsible. Carried a BAR . Two things he said about it. One: he was always scrounging for ammo. Two: When he used it, the enemy tended to scatter, or he got a.lot of return fire or both. During the Ardennes offensive, the Germans moved so fast he ended up behind enemy lines trying to get back. He said he never saw that many tanks in his life. He was the only country boy in the platoon, with one being a first generation Italian American, who looked it and since he came from Little Italy in New York, spoke with a slight Italian accent. He caught chickens on farms they went through, plucked and cooked them, milked cows, etc, and thus kept them fed. Then they got caught by the Americans. Since they had the Italian guy, and the Germans had used American uniforms in some of the attack, they were interrogated. Long story short, it was unpleasant, until a general came to interrogate. Turns out the general came from the same small town as my father. After talking a bit the general said “No way this man is a German. He could not possibly know this stuff.” Then asked my dad “How about the Italian guy?” My father: “He’s been with us since boot. Hates Mussolini and Hitler, and has killed his share.” And that was the end if that.

When I moved to Austin (not the town I fell in love w/ back in ‘85). I made point, when the subject came up, that I was moving BACK to TX.

That will be my reply when I move late this year…

Scott, there are tons of little towns throughout Texas. Pretty much every town in TX once you get outta the suburb ring of the cities.

I’m pretty sure that Alzheimer drug is called Trunalimunumaprzure.

Sounds like a Pres. Sippy Cup pronunciation. Or an eye chart.

Horrible thought, but are aborted baby tissues being used to create these Alzheimer drugs? Charging over $50,000 dollars for purloined fetal tissues sounds about right for Big Pharma. Rats with baby scalps growing on them—-how ghoulish was that?!!! Sodom meet Gomorrah!

This episode really resonated with me. My Dad would have been 99 this year and he was in the Pacific with the Navy in WWII. My uncle was in Europe and went into one of the concentration camps there. And now I’ve lived in Japan for the past 23 years.
Some of the Californians that have moved into southern Utah haven’t been so great. Utah is similar to Japan in that the good parts are because the populace at large are quite conservative but some of the Californians have turned many popular scenic spots into over-priced tourist traps. The pioneer families that settled that area have mostly moved away.

Steve have you listened to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History series Ghosts of the Ostfront?

California Energy Plan is an oxymoron

Membership has it’s benefits and this episode is an example of just that.

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