August Is Starting To Scorch In Texas While Betty Jo Keeps Cooler In Washington

Day after day after day after day over 100 degrees, with very little chance of precipitation precipitating, as you can see via a screen cap from this morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which kindly allows me to check the weather, and little else.

On the plus side of little chance of precipitation precipitating the humidity is lower than it would be if there was some precipitation precipitating, thus the HEAT INDEX is not at the misery level long suffering Iran is currently experiencing at 160 some degrees.

Does Iran have air-conditioning of the modern sort? I have no idea. I read recently that most of Europe thinks America is way too cool. They were referring to the low temperatures of our interior spaces, not that other way us American's are way too cool.

I heard from Betty Jo Bouvier last night, up north in my old home state of Washington. Part of what  Betty Jo had to say was temperature related. Betty Jo does not know how good she has it at relatively chilly temperatures. This is what Betty Jo had to say about getting HOT....

Another hot day in Washington, 83 degrees right now at 7 in the evening. It has been so hot and dry that the lawn just crunches when you walk. I haven't watered except my flowers and my small patch of vegetables. 

Flowers and a patch of vegetables. Luxuries I sorely miss.....

Incoming Spencer Jack Washington Wildfire Report On Way To Lake Chelan

Earlier this afternoon Tootsie Tonasket shared photos of a wildfire burning near her Eastern Washington town.

A few minutes ago incoming email  from Spencer Jack and his dad, with the photo you see here of a big wildfire on the shores of Lake Chelan. Also in Eastern Washington.

The other side of the mountains, as in Western Washington, with those mountains being the Cascades, is also burning.

Elsie Hotpepper will soon be heading to the sizzling Pacific Northwest, the Oregon part of the territory. I have read of no wildfires burning in Oregon so far.

Having a Hotpepper in the state may change that.

The message in the email from Spencer Jack and his dad said.....

Spencer Jack and I are en route to check out the burning part of our state.

We thought we'd be staying in Lake Chelan tonight, however, decided to stay in this Bavarian themed town we found along the way.

We will report back as necessary once we get to the front lines of the wild fires.

The Bavarian themed town Spencer Jack found on the way to Lake Chelan is Leavenworth. Leavenworth is the biggest, and  best, of the Washington themed tourist towns. Ironically, the last time I was in Leavenworth, a Saturday in August of 2001, wildfires were burning in the mountains above Leavenworth, with firefighters using Leavenworth as a staging area.

I have not been on Lake Chelan since way back in the last century. I believe the year was 1997 or 98. Not long before the exile to Texas, that I do remember. A floating group of eight took the Lady of the Lake from Manson at the south end of the lake, to Stehekin at the north end, to stay in the National Park Lodge in North Cascades National Park.

This was a bear filled four days. We were barely off the boat  before we had our first of dozens of bear encounters. I documented this Stehekin Lake Chelan excursion years ago in a web tale in three parts, beginning with the float up the lake and the bears, followed by hiking, and then our dining adventures, some accessed through a bear infested abandoned apple orchard.

I don't know if it is a good idea to turn viewing a wildfire into a tourist attraction. Wildfires can turn dangerous real  fast. I'm sure Spencer Jack and his dad will be careful....

A Bachelor Party On Saddlebag Island Led Me To Learn America's Biggest Boondoggle Still Preserves Feral Cats

Over the weekend Spencer Jack's dad, he being my Favorite Nephew Jason, aka FNJ, and several of his high school buddies floated out to Saddlebag Island State Park to have a bachelor party for one of the buddies who is about to get married.

I saw pictures of the Saddlebag Island Bachelor Party this morning on Facebook. That would be a pair of the aforementioned buddies, standing on Saddlebag Island, looking out at Dot Island.

All these islands are among the hundreds of islands in the San Juan archipelago.

I saw the above picture of Dot Island and thought it might be useful for education purposes.

At my current location much fuss is made by what is known as America's Biggest Boondoggle over something referred to as Panther Island. The Boondoggle slaps the Panther Island nomenclature on all sorts of things.

Calling a chunk of land an island does not magically surround it with water, making it an island.

This is sort of embarrassing, at  least to me, but, apparently, a lot of the locals are okay with an imaginary island. But then, one has to keep in mind those same locals, for decades, were okay with Fort Worth confusing its few tourists by having signs in its downtown pointing to Sundance Square, where there was no square.

Soon upon being in Texas I was in downtown Fort Worth, pretty much being one of those rare out of state tourists. I was confused by the signs pointing to Sundance Square. I had walked all over downtown Fort Worth, which does not take too long, unable to find Sundance Square. Eventually I asked a local  where Sundance Square is. The local pointed to the parking lot under the Chisholm Trail mural and told me "I think that parking lot is Sundance Square."

Years later I learned that a multi-block area of downtown Fort Worth, years before, had been designated Sundance Square, as part of some sort of downtown revitalization project.

A couple years ago Fort Worth finally ceased confusing its few tourists by turning those Chisholm Trail mural parking lots into an actual public square, goofily named Sundance Square Plaza.

Apparently no lesson was learned from the decades of confusing Fort Worth's few tourists with a non-existent Sundance Square, so now the town is confusing its few tourists with an imaginary island.

I do not know how a local answers the "where is the island?" question when asked by one of those few tourists.

Regarding Saddlebag Island State Park, I had not heard of this island or park before, so I Googled it to find myself surprised it was so close to my old home zone. In the lower right of the above map you see the Skagit River wiggling through Burlington and Mount Vernon. Burlington is the town I grew up in. Mount Vernon is where I lived before moving to Texas.

A red balloon marks the location of Saddlebag Island, just to the right of Guemes Island, which is due north of Fidalgo Island, where Spencer Jack's dad's Fidalgo Drive-In is located in Anacortes.

Above Saddlebag Island and slightly to the right is Samish Island. Samish Island is like a Fort Worth island, in that it is not really an island. But, unlike a Fort Worth island, Samish Island used to be a real island before early settlers diked off the sea so as to make a lot of fertile farmland.

The Washington State Park website has a good description of the things one can do on a real island, along with several pictures of what a real island looks like. From the WSP website...

Saddlebag Island (including Dot Island) is a 24-acre marine park located in Padilla Bay with 6,750 feet of shoreline. The park is named for the two rocky knobs separated by a narrow “saddle” of land that form the shape of the island. The park is a boat-in camping park within the San Juan islands, popular for its crabbing opportunities. Beautiful wildflowers bloom on the island between April and May, much earlier than other sites in the San Juan archipelago. The park is a popular site for wildlife viewing, with harbor seals and river otters abundant in the surrounding waters. Visitors frequently report sightings of bald eagles and peregrine falcons in the area.

Wikipedia also has Saddlebag Island State Park entry....

Park activities include boating, crabbing, diving, saltwater fishing, swimming, water skiing, birdwatching, and wildlife viewing, though there are no mooring buoys or docks. The campground has five primitive campsites, one of which is reserved for human- or wind-powered visitors on the Cascadia Marine Trail.

I was shocked to see that Wikipedia has no Panther Island entry. Wikipedia does have an article about America's Biggest Boondoggle, titled Trinity River Vision Project. The article is mostly a propaganda puff piece, so pitifully bad that it causes Wikipedia to ask readers to help improve it because the article has multiple issues. The following paragraph from the Wikipedia Trinity River Vision Project article is an example of those multiple issues....

The goal of the master plan is to preserve and enhance the river and its corridors so they remain essential greenways for open space, trails, neighborhood focal points, feral cats and recreation areas.

No mention of the imaginary island, rockin' the river, wakeboarding, three bridges being built in slow motion, but preserving feral cats is still part of the project......

Seattle Billionaire Nick Hanauer Explains Why Raising Minimum Wage Causes Booming Economy

On Facebook, and in other locations, I find myself getting annoyed at some of the  nonsense spouted by right wing reactionaries whose unevolved, uneducated, wrong-headed, economically stupid claims about raising the minimum wage bear no relationship to economic reality.

But, they are just so darn sure of themselves.

One of Seattle's billionaires, Nick Hanauer, speaking to the New York City wage board about the economic reality of raising the minimum wage, explains in simple easy to understand language what actually happens in towns and states which have raised the minimum wage to a level much higher than states like Texas and towns like Fort Worth.

Below I excerpted part of  how Billionaire Nick Hanauer Explains How Higher Wages Create Jobs, for your economic education enlightenment....

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “a review of 64 studies on minimum wage increases found no discernible effect on employment.” And contrary to popular belief, relatively large minimum-wage hikes like those recently passed in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are not unprecedented. For example, the federal minimum wage jumped 88% in one year, from 40 cents an hour in 1949 to 75 cents in 1950. Yet despite the usual warning from the Chicken Littles at the National Association of Manufacturing that the hike would prove “a reckless jolt to the economic system,” unemployment plummeted, from 5.9% in 1949 to 2.9% in 1953.

Likewise, my home state of Washington raised the minimum wage for tipped workers by 85% between 1988 and 1990—yet over the following decade restaurant employment growth somehow managed to outpace the nation as a whole.

I live in Seattle, the first major city in the US to enact a $15 minimum wage. But a high minimum wage was not a departure for us or something new. Seattle already had the highest minimum wage in the country. Rather, $15 was a continuation of an economic strategy that already was allowing our city to outperform yours.

Our current state minimum wage is $9.47—30% higher than the federal minimum. Seattle’s minimum wage is now $11.00, 52% higher than the national minimum. But we have no tip penalty in our state, so our tipped workers make $11 plus tips, 513% higher than the federal tipped minimum of $2.13, and more than twice the $5 still paid here in NY.

So, if the good people from the industry were right, that a higher minimum wage killed jobs, then we should have no restaurants in Seattle, right? You would have to bring food and cooking equipment when you came to visit us in the hinterlands. How could it not be otherwise, with these stratospherically high wages?

But here’s a really odd thing. Not only do we still have some restaurants in Seattle, we have a lot of them. In fact, we have more of them per capita than even—wait for it—New York City. According to a Bloomberg analysis, of all major cities in the US, Seattle ranks second in restaurants per capita. New York is number four. Read it and weep, New York. OK, so surely the number one spot will be held by some low-wage paradise, right? Not hardly. The number one spot is San Francisco, the only place in America that pays restaurant workers $12.25, even more than Seattle. Why? How can this be? They told us that high wages killed jobs!! And business! And the economy!

Nonsense.

Seattle has more restaurants than New York because that’s how capitalism works. The fundamental law of capitalism is: when workers have more money, businesses have more customers, and need to hire more workers. In places where wages are high, business is good—particularly for restaurants.

Let me say that another way. When restaurants pay restaurant workers enough so that even they can afford to eat in restaurants, that isn’t bad for the restaurant business—it’s great for it, despite what the good folks at the National Restaurant Association may tell you.

With the highest minimum wage in the country, my state somehow manages to outpace the rest of the country in small business job growth.

_________________________________________________

Go to Billionaire Nick Hanauer Explains How Higher Wages Create Jobs to read all of what Nick Hanauer had to tell the New York City wage board.

Zebra Zeke Cries No Tears Over Cecil The Lion's Murder

I saw that which you see here this morning on Facebook.

Is it too soon after a psychopathic American dentist's murder of Cecil the Lion for this type of, well, humor?

In the photo that is allegedly the late Cecil the Lion eating Gary the Gazelle, who Cecil killed for dinner.

Gary the Gazelle was killed via the natural method, with Cecil using no bows, arrows or bullets. Cecil did not have a hunting permit. Nor did Cecil remove the head of Gary the Gazelle to mount on the wall of his den.

Below is the text you see as part of the screen cap under Cecil and Gary....

Turns out, Cecil the Lion was no choirboy. Photos have surfaced of Cecil in the act of killing and eating Gary the Gazelle. Gary was a favorite of both locals and visitors at Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, where he delighted onlookers with his trademark leap, while clicking his heels. Gary was 12 years old and leaves his beloved wife, Greta Gazelle, and their 8 (unnamed) offspring. Gary's long-time friend and confidante, Zeke the Zebra said, "A lot of people are crying over Cecil lately, but, let me tell you, I've lost a lot of friends and family to him. He was an animal. I won't be crying no tears."

Bullet Proof Armadillo Sends Texan To Hospital With Bullet In His Head

I find this story just a little hard to believe.

A Texan supposedly shot an armadillo, with the bullet bouncing off the armadillo, ricocheting back to the shooter's head, sending him to a hospital.

An armadillo's armor is hard, but is it hard enough to bounce a bullet?

I think the shooter may have been under the influence of an adult beverage, aimed at the armadillo, pulled the trigger, with the bullet hitting a rock near the intended victim and then bouncing back to the shooter's head in a karmic case of instant poetic justice.

I have seen a murdered armadillo before, the victim of a gun shot near the mountain bike trail entry in Gateway Park.

Isn't it a felony of some sort to shoot one of the official state symbols of Texas? Why would anyone in their right mind shoot something as cute as a harmless armadillo?

At The Geekfill Bar Texas Sings Karaoke While Washington Drinks Coffee

Spencer Jack's dad, my favorite nephew, Jason, also known as FNJ, emailed a link to a geekfill webpage titled The 50 States Of America If They Were Actually People In A Bar. California Is Perfect.

Below are some of the more amusing states being a person in a bar, starting with California. Texas being a person in a bar is amusing, as was my old home state of Washington, and the state I was born in, Oregon, but before you meet those states in a bar, California...

California is constantly buying drinks for others, yet has failing kidneys from lack of hydration.

Arizona is the bouncer, kicking Mexicans out who are trying to get in from the bar across the street. Ironically, he’s drinking Tecate.

Colorado is a beautiful, perfectly athletic couple wearing all Patagonia, drinking craft beer talking about their last mountaineering trip, with an air of aloofness.

Idaho is drinking Keystone Light and pretending they are part of the South.

Kansas is dressed in a plaid shirt, jeans and clean boots. He’s friendly enough and even buys a round to get the party started. After a few drinks, it’s obvious he feels sorry for Oklahoma, hates Missouri, and is hung up on Colorado. After striking out with California, him and Wisconsin get hammered drunk and sing Country Boy.

Mississippi is just looking to start a fight with Alabama about who’s less redneck.

New Hampshire is a skinny, nerdy white guy in a collared shirt and khakis, who also carried in signs for his favorite political candidate. He’s drinking craft beer and getting into philosophical and political discussions with Vermont and Maine, but is open to talk to everyone. He is quick to tell everyone he loves himself, and humbly without arrogance.

Oklahoma is an obese couple who have not moved from their spots since sitting down next to Texas. They have on sweatpants, and brought in fast food to eat at the bar. They are drinking Bud Light bottles.

Oregon is the hipster drinking the eclectic craft microbrew that nobody’s even heard of.

Texas is singing karaoke about how great Texas is.

Washington is a pale girl, very quiet and reluctant to be friendly to anyone except Oregon. She has glasses and a couple books, and isn’t drinking because she’s enjoying a cup of coffee she got from her favorite place on the way here. She loves hiking with her boyfriend and watching indie movies and documentaries on Netflix. She suddenly yells at New Jersey for throwing a napkin on the floor and not in the correct recycling bin.

Texas & Washington's Different Sizzling Summer Scorching Heat Waves

No, what you are looking at here is not some Fort Worthers Rockin' the River at last night's Happy Hour Inner Tube Float in the Trinity River.

I saw that which you see here on the front page of this morning's Seattle Times online.

The people in the photo are floating in Lake Washington, a clean body of water suitable for swimming and fishing, with no signs warning people not to eat the fish they catch.

Western Washington has had itself a couple days in a row with the temperature above 90, which has a large percentage of the population seeking heat relief by heading to one of the hundreds of beaches available for cooling  purposes in the Puget Sound zone.

We are a couple hours before noon at my current location in North Texas, with the temperature rapidly approaching 90, on its way, I assume, to going over 100 again today. The North Texas locals don't whine about the temperature the way Western Washingtonians whine.

In North Texas the summer temperature can go over 100 day after day, for weeks.

In Washington what the locals call a heat wave usually lasts only three days, before a meteorological effect, the name of which I can not remember, kicks in.

Basically what happens with a Western Washington heat wave is all that hot air starts to rise and head over the Cascade Mountains to Eastern Washington,  which causes cool air to be drawn in from the Pacific Ocean, sort of natural air-conditioning that you have to wait for three days for it to kick in.

Possible thunderstorms are on the weather menu for North Texas. Currently I see nothing but a clear blue sky when I look out the window, with my temperature monitoring device telling we are currently chilled to 86....

My Last HOT Neighborhood Bike Ride Til The Air Cools

With the outer world temperature a degree or two under 100 it seemed like an excellent idea to take my handlebars on a roll around the neighborhood.

Well.

I sort of got a bit overheated by the 4th or 5th mile.

As you can see, the heat does not stop golfers from golfing.

Are Texas golf carts air-conditioned? Texas mountain bikes are not air-conditioned.

In summers previous I have had myself a mighty fine time riding my bike when the temperature is in the century zone.

But, that wheel rolling took place on mountain bike trails. Mostly shaded, concrete-free, mountain bike trails. For the most part I don't get under much shade when I bike tour the neighborhood. And concrete and asphalt radiate heat, unlike the non-radiating dirt mountain bike trails.

So, why am I not rolling my motorized mechanical motion device to a mountain bike location? Well, last I checked the Gateway Park trails have yet to recover from the recent  flooding. The River Legacy Park trails are back to normal, I think, but those trails are not as enjoyable as Gateway Parks'.

Just got email from TXU telling me to turn down my A/C this afternoon due to today's HEAT, so as not to cause rolling brownouts. The A/C just cycled on. It is set to cool  to 85.

Something Never Seen In Texas On A Bridge Built In 21 Months

Continuing on with our popular series of  bloggings  about things I see via west coast news sources which is not something we would likely be seeing as a news event at my location in Texas.

This blogging is also continuing with our popular series of bloggings about construction projects, mostly bridges, built in a time span of less than four years.

What you see here I saw on Facebook this morning. A posting by KING 5 TV. KING 5 is the Seattle NBC affiliate.

The bridge you are looking at here is St. John's Bridge, spanning the Williamette River in Portland, Oregon.

This bridge is in the news today due to that which you see dangling from the bridge deck.

Protesters.

Protesters blocking a Shell Oil support ship trying to float to the Arctic where Shell is planning to poke holes in the seabed so as to extract oil. A lot of people do not think this to be a good idea, hence the protesting.

Construction on St. John's Bridge began one month before the Stock Market Crash of 1929 began the Great Depression. The bridge was completed 21 months later, on May 12, 1931.

At the dedication of the bridge, bridge engineer, David B. Steirman made a very Fort Worthy braggadocio type statement, saying...

"A challenge and an opportunity to create a structure of enduring beauty in the God-given wondrous background was offered us when were asked to design the bridge. It is the most beautiful bridge in the world we feel.”

If America's Biggest Boondoggle's three bridges being built over dry land, currently with a four year project timeline, actually get built, I can imagine J.D. Granger, or his mama, or someone else opining that the bridges are the most beautiful bridges in the world.

However, at the time St. John's Bridge was dedicated it may have been the most beautiful bridge in the world. The superlatives which describe St. John's Bridge at the time of its completion are certainly of a sort one will never hear about Fort Worth's simple little bridges, built over dry land, connecting the mainland to an  imaginary island. In four years.

While St. John's Bridge, in 1931 had....

• the highest clearance in the nation,
• the longest prefabricated steel cable rope strands,
• the tallest steel frame piers of reinforced concrete,
• the first application of aviation clearance lights to the towers, and
• the longest suspension span west of Detroit, Michigan.

I wonder if there will be sufficient clearance under America's Biggest Boondoggle's bridges for protesters protesting something being shipped in the Trinty River to dangle and block passage?