Happy Labor Day to my American readers.
This is Fritzi, listening to my ticker (which is behaving itself, I’m happy to report — my heart, that is). Okay, I guess the thing with the watch is a bit of insider humor. Timex watches have a reputation for ticking loudly. I have five in my collection, and at my age can’t hear any of them.
Fritzi and Lulu, our younger dachshunds, have adjusted to life without their leader and housemate Mister B. Donna and I still miss him, especially at mealtimes, when even at his worst the old dog would still show signs of excitement. RIP, friend and companion.
Back to Labor Day: I’m taking it easy today, as is only right, but did put in some labor yesterday, getting up early to defog the headlight covers on Donna’s car. She bought me a kit for the job, which included several fine grit pads and an applicator rotor for the drill. I followed the instructions carefully and all I have to say, after two hours of sweaty labor in a hot garage, is meh. A whole lot of work for not much result — the headlights are only slightly less fogged than they were before.
This Thursday Donna’s driving to Las Vegas for our granddaughter Taylor’s bridal shower, so she wants a clean car. We put new tires on it week before last, and we’re getting the wheels aligned Tuesday or Wednesday. Not sure how Polly will get to work while Donna’s away, because she’s been using Donna’s car. I don’t want her using my truck, so I guess she’ll just have to use her own car, and before you say well if she has her own car what’s the fuss, the fuss is insurance, which she doesn’t have and won’t have until she earns a paycheck or two. But I’ll bet close to half the drivers in Tucson aren’t insured either. Who can even afford insurance these days?
Polly and her car aside — even though she’s been living with us the last three years, and for several multi-year stretches before that, it’s a temporary situation and at some point she’ll be be gone and on her own again — I’d really like it if Donna and I could become a one-car family. The expense of owning, insuring, and maintaining two cars is insane. Donna’s on the road all the time, shopping, going to meetings, and seeing friends, but I rarely go anywhere. The only time we’d miss the convenience of a second car is when one’s in the shop and we don’t want to have to sit and wait, but with the money we’d save cutting back to one car we could afford to call an Uber, right? Now to convince Donna. …
I hate sharing this video of a fellow aviator crashing and dying. You’ve probably seen it anyway; it’s been all over the news and social media. It happened at an airshow rehearsal in Poland last Thursday, August 28th; the pilot was one of the Polish Air Force’s best and most experienced.
Over the years I’ve known several demo pilots: F-15 colleagues picked and trained to perform high-performance demos at airshows, including a Kadena squadronmate who went on to fly with the Thunderbirds, not to mention demo pilots from other fighters and attack aircraft, and to a man and women they all say it’s a dangerous business, maneuvering fast jets close to the ground. Hell, I knew that the first time I flew a low-level.
I don’t know if details from the investigation will ever be shared outside the F-16 community, but will keep my eyes and ears open.
Thirty years ago a guy I know, a fellow Hash House Harrier, forwarded me an unprompted email about Snopes, the rumor-debunking site. The document he sent slammed Snopes as being secretly partisan, pretending to be objective and neutral but really pushing a liberal agenda. Up to that point I’d had no idea my friend had any political views at all. The chain mail “evidence” against Snopes my friend shared was obviously concocted by what Hillary Clinton famously called a vast right-wing conspiracy, a conspiracy dedicated to undermining people’s faith in scholarship, science, expertise, and objective truth itself.
The result of the right’s vast, multigenerational Who You Gonna Believe, Me or Your Lyin’ Eyes campaign is on full display today, all across MAGA and personified by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who probably started down the path he’s on by sharing the same sort of reactionary chain email my old hashing buddy was into.