OK - before I went back to school, we tried to get out a few more times... |
As you can tell from the little fur ball in the back, "we" was Mom, Gill, me and the dogs... |
This is what the waterfalls looked like before all the forest fires... |
Apparently Mom really likes that potrait mode on her iphone... |
You can see that by the time Dad started taking pictures the wild fires were starting to have an effect... |
Particles in the air are supposed to result in spectacular sunsets... not so much when there are too many particles. |
Dad kept working at it though and managed to get this... |
The air kept getting worse though... |
So we ran out to the beach! (You can still see some smoke though...) |
It was one of the few times we ever went to the beach that it was actually warm and sunny! |
Once again... "we" included Gill and the dogs and not Dad... some excuse about a "job"... |
If sailors are supposed to take warning or delight from a red sky, what are they supposed to do with a brown one? |
Someone else took these but this is Portland over the span of a week... |
Fortunately all that smoke cleared before the first day of school so Mom could get this! |
You don't really believe Dad (The Right Reverend) put that on his bumper, do you? But just think what it would be like if we could all just get along... |
If you thought 2020 was bad... just wait until September...
It is definitely time to employ ostrich mode...
While you were watching current events unfold, were you aware that Wall Street was bombed on September 16th? The blast immediately killed 30 people and another 10 died later. In addition, hundreds of people were injured, including 143 seriously. Sadly, this was much more deadly than the bombing of the Los Angeles Times, but not nearly as deadly as the race riots in Tulsa that killed between 100 and 300 people and basically leveled 35 square blocks...
Of course, you've already realized that these events didn't happen in 2020... The Los Angeles Times bombing was 1910 (pro union iron workers dynamiting the offices of an anti-union newspaper publisher) while the Wall Street bombing was 1920 (possibly in response to the arrest and indictment of Sacco & Vanzetti (who, as you know, were immigrants wrongly convicted of murder who were sentenced to death for the crime they didn't commit)) and the Tulsa massacre was 1921 (a race riot in response to an alleged assault by a black teen against a white teen who stated clearly that it did not happen and she wouldn't press charges.) Ideally we could say we have progressed significantly over the last 100 years or so, but clearly we have not.
"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - Winston Churchill 1948.
Unfortunately, Mr. Churchill was, in fact, repeating history.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana 1905.
The Tulsa massacre was basically ignored until 1996 when a commission was formed to review the events 75 years after they occurred. In 2001 they concluded that the city conspired with white citizens against black citizens, and finally this year the massacre was added to the Oklahoma school curriculum... maybe the kids will see it on Zoom and pay a little attention if they think it is a YouTube or TikTok video... you never know.
Now I should turn this into something light-hearted and silly, but I really can't. Seriously, look at thte state of our country. Have we learned anything?
So instead I will say just look at the pictures.