caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

Lots of craziness around the world right now, wouldn't y'all agree?

Still, we have good music, good friends, art, literature, and landscapes to keep us appreciating our lives. While I didn't mention good family specifically, I have few blood related family members, so in my mind, my friends are my version of "family".

I suggest we keep in constant touch with our families, keep each of them informed, prepared, and give them some sense of security when our economy goes down the commode with a quick flush.

Welcome to Friday Night Photos everyone. Your once a week break from the daily madness of the crazy world we live in. Post any photos, memes, music, or whatever else you find of interest that helps you escape the madness.

Last Saturday morning I took a drive north up the coast to Encinitas for the 44th annual Wavecrest Woodie meet. Weather wise it was a nice morning. Temps in the upper 60s and overcast skies providing nice diffused lighting. Not as many cars this year as there was last year, but still a nice selection of Woodies, some that I had seen before and some that were new.

As you read this my wife and I will be on our way to the gorgeous white sand and blue waters of Gulf Shores, Alabama.

We really lucked out on this one. Gulf Shores is just a hop, skip and a jump from Hurricane Helene's landfall in the panhandle of Florida. I hope those folks over there in the Big Bend area will be OK. Helene was a Cat. 4 when it hit the shore, it's a big one.

The area east of the hurricane is getting hammered as well. There's massive rain and wind over Florida, and it will move up into Georgia and the Appalachians. To the west of the hurricane, where Gulf Shores is, will be pretty calm and quiet. Like I said, we really got lucky on this one, a little wobble to the west and our vacation will have been much different, as in nonexistent.

It was a nail biter all week tracking the hurricane and it's a relief that we get to go, but at the same time we feel guilty in our pleasure knowing what those folks are going through just a short distance away. A hurricane, Beryl, went right over the top of us in Southeast Texas a few months ago. It made landfall south of Houston as a Cat. 1 hurricane and by the time it went over us it was just a tropical storm, but that was bad enough. There was flooding, trees down everywhere and we were without electricity for 6 days. That, I'm sure, is nothing compared to what folks are going through beneath Helene.

Hopefully everyone got to high ground.

History Repeats Itself - Kind Of

Many, many, many years ago, like over 110 years ago, my great-grandfather was sent from England, as a Bernardo's Boy, to Canada. Why? Well...

He had been kicked out of his home when he was 13 or so by his step-father. His father was dead. He roamed the streets of London, with a lot of other kids/boys. It was fairly common. He hung out in the train stations and helped the men who worked the trains, the conductors, the cleaners, the ticket sellers, the mechanics, all of that. And one day, he and a friend decided it would be fun to take a train and 'drive' it a bit. They'd done this before, under supervision, but this time was without supervision. They got caught, rehomed to orphanages and great-granpa got sent to Canada. He was basically an indentured servant, or a slave, working on a farm in eastern Canada. He hated that servitude, so he ran away and joined up with some electricians putting up the first cross Canada electricity lines. He helped them in any way he could, basically doing menial chores, setting up camp, making dinner, cleaning and so on. They appreciated him and taught him how to be an electrician as they worked across Canada. By the time they were moving across the western, but not coastal, area of Canada (eastern BC, western Alberta), he was an electrician as well, going up the poles, putting up the lines, doing all the stuff. And that's where he met my great grandma. He was up the pole and he looked down, saw her walking down the street and decided that was HIS woman. And so she was.

Interior of a London Underground Train, 1911, from this article in Monovisions about the early days of London underground trains.

WION: How the US is preparing for China war- Typhoon Missiles