Beware of the Ides of March, Mr. Putin

Doomy and Gloomy. I'm Back...

Well Winter is ending. The frogs have been noisy since a few weeks ago. There are a few more interesting birds at our feeder and last night the first echoes of the annual migration showed up on the overnight Doppler Radar. Warmer weather is coming and I just mowed the yard for the first time last weekend. Yesterday I bought some Onion Starts and this weekend I’ll continue to do some more garden prep - despite the usual Atmospheric River that is on its way.

Its been kind of tough this winter. I’ve lost one friend to the big C - my friend David Stone, who was my longtime fishing buddy and colleague. He ran the violin shop on University Way in Seattle. His wife Aviva Leonard who we lost deeper in the past was one of Nancy’s closest friends. Our daughter Lila inherited many of their daughter Sarah’s baby clothes. We also lost my friend Tom Rice who was well-known amongst sea shellers for his Of Sea and Shore magazine as well as the seashell museum above the Port Gamble Store nearby. He fell down a long flight of stairs at his home in Thailand in late November and languished in the hospital for a month before he succumbed. Actually, his death was reported before the fact just like Samuel Clemens, before it was reported for sure. I and a few others are hoping he has just gone into hiding.

Many are just simply burned out from two years of the Pandemic, the Trump Years, and facing challenges such as inflation, worry about reopening when it seems perhaps too early (locally the mask mandates expire tonight at midnight), especially with first signs of the BA2 Variant wave appearing in the UK and New York where cases are now headed upward again. The low point after Omicron was about the same level as Delta’s peak just a week or so ago!

And then there was the worry about the warmongering by Russia’s Putin. Its now been two weeks since they attacked. Many of us are worried that Nuclear War is right around the corner. I can understand Biden’s hesitancy to defend Ukraine with a No Fly Zone. But then what happens when he goes after Estonia or Lithuania next?

I had a deeper than usual low period on my cyclothymia. Had teeth hurting while I was in between dentists, with one area in my mouth about to go nuclear. Also had some pending health check ups and was wondering how I was doing heart-wise, hips-wise etc. I tend to fear the worse. Friends seemed simply grumpy on the phone when I reached out for some human contact - so I simply minded my own business and stopped trying and even go as so far to turn off my ringer. Instead of working on anything other than the handful of orders that I did get out the door, I spent more time reading mysteries and finding occasional other ways to numb myself, such as random TikTok.

Then on top of this our wonderfully funny and companionable and lovely 12.5 year old puppy Stella up and died on us, and right around when the war started, after a month of increasing hearing loss - and then sudden vision and coordination loss. She was at about the max life expectancy for Goldendoodles and had a very good and happy life here. We miss her dearly and Nancy, Lila and I are having to readjust to a life without the silly routines and rituals that were deeply embedded in our days with her. We still haven’t put away all the toys that she mostly destroyed. We are trying to capture her legacy with the many pictures and videos we took with her. Its hard to consider going out and fining any kind of replacement. There just isn;t any for that hole in our hearts!

Ugh! So I now trying to crawl out of this hole. I decided to start taking Folk Flute orders again as I prefer to have a good cash flow and have 3 other flutes that will all be interesting to finish. Otherwise I am simply adding names and desires to a waiting list. Yesterday I got into some Rose Engine engraving. This week I wanted to start working on some ideas for 3D printing and 4 axis machining but for some reason my Apple Pencil has disappeared. The new one arrives tomorrow.

I am getting caught up. The offending wisdom tooth was carefully extracted by Dr. Wells at Kitsap Dental in Poulsbo and the tooth next to it fixed. The other two quadrants needing attention will be worked on in May. My hip sockets aren’t as bad as I feared and I get some PT later this month. Blood tests are generally good - though I need to perhaps up my fish intake (Statins simply do not work for me). I am eager to exercise more after this winter’s idleness.

Hopefully this will not be for naught. If WW3 starts we’ll probably know about it for a few milliseconds. If Kitsap County is excluded from the rest of the world including the US, we have the 3rd largest nuclear arsenal in the world, behind the US and Russia. The Trident Submarine Base is just 7 miles away SW of us. Actually, if this is to happen, I’d rather not linger in the fallout.

Ugh! Maybe Senator Graham has a point and maybe history will repeat itself. March is historically a bad time for Russian Leaders. Stalin died on March 5th. Tzar Nickie abdicated the throne on March 15th. Apparently other Russian leaders similarly didn’t last the month. I can understand why - after a winter and during the thaw from permafrost to mud, many in that part of the world are out for blood.

I am hoping the Sanctions and decoupling from the rest of the world helps end this - and I am seeing some signs that maybe China even wants to be on the correct side of history. I heard that with the plunging of the Ruble that the dollar value of the Russian Economy rivals the state of Ohio. I am heartened by the show of support for Ukraine.

Those who think we should show similar support to other besieged countries and populations are correct - but the difference with this conflict that makes it ever so much more worrisome and important are the scales of the countries involved, and the potential for this to spill over into the rest of Europe and the World. And the fact that the world’s greatest adversary since Hitler has enough nukes to kill the biosphere. There is a good chance that Putin has lost his understanding of Mutually Assured Destruction. Remember that his acolyte Trump once asked “We have Nuclear Weapons. Why can’t we use them?” Putin probably answered “Why not?” and set his plan in motion early during Trump’s presidency.

Imagine if this was happening and Trump was still President. No doubt he would be telling us to stuff bleach up our ass to fight the effects of fallout.

I know a former Cold War-era commander of a Polaris Submarine. He and his 2nd in command could have started WW3 any time they chose, provided they had the codes. My friend Bill is one of the most level-headed warriors I’ve met and I have heard that the US Military chooses their warriors who push the final buttons carefully. I am glad that its people of his calibre who are the ultimate deciders. I just hope that the ones that Russia employs are similarly vetted, and aren’t anywhere similar to the bumbling idiots in the Russian Army that are shocked to find out that they were duped into bombing their distant and not so distant relatives in Kiev, thinking it was simply war games out in the Taiga.

Another ready way to numb myself was to first watch instructional videos on YouTube. When that wore out I succumbed to TikTok. Actually my intro to that platform was early in the Pandemic with Makeshift Macaroni’s Ukulele Scream. Uncontrolled scrolling through it seems to show all sorts of variety of young boobage, animal cruelty, gun play, and other stuff better left unseen. Thus I mostly avoided it. But then I discovered that one can glom onto and follow the stuff that is amazing even if you don’t search for it. These include all the women STEM scientists involved in Space Exploration, Marine Biology, Geology and the other sciences. One provides all sorts of wowie updates on the James Webb Space telescope including the first calibration images. We’ll see the first scientific images at about the Solstice (assuming Humanity survives Putin).

There are all sorts of cool videos showing how “creators” (a term increasingly used - I guess I am one of these and have been for 4 decades) make things, including how things are made in the industries in China, sometimes with some rather crude and basic machinery that is actually brilliant. One of my favorite books is China at Work by Rudolph Hommel (1937) which documents the former indigenous craft and manufacturing methods of that country before the industrial revolution took hold there. Some of these methods are in use today and one can see these on TikTok and YouTube.

But then the war started and suddenly TikTok was filled full of live or supposedly live streams from Ukraine, would be journalists and bloggers, Anonymous, propaganda from Russia itself, Putin Republicans and other crap. Occasional purging waves by TikTok seemed to be random, knocking some legit bloggers off while leaving FOX News or the equivalent. One such blogger/journalist who I discovered earlier this week while convalescing is John Aravosis from Washington DC who seemed to have the best daily distillation of the news during his 4PM Pacific Time livestream.

It became quickly apparent that he had been purged. TikTok claims he was shut off for “hateful speech” and it was speculated that Russian Trolls (and he had some trolls out there for sure - some 360,000 people were following him on that platform) complained. He appealed and TikTok refuses to let him back. He also has a Substack and this post describes his purging in detail:

see https://cyberdisobedience.substack.com/p/ukraine-censorhip-tiktok

I and several others immediately suggested that he switch over to a YouTube live channel. After some effort that he reported, he was up and running on that platform and did his usual 4PM show. Tomorrow, so that more Europeans can watch he will be streaming at 10AM Pacific Time, 1PM East Coat and 6PM UK time.

During today’s broadcast there was much discussion about TikTok’s actions. I was curious who owns TikTok. It became apparent that one of its earliest investors was Jeffrey Voss, a reclusive billionaire who is the richest person in Pennsylvania who is a major donor to Conservatives including Rand Paul and even some white supremacist groups. I posted some links to articles on him on John’s YouTube as well as his Substack about this person. I may have identified the “Russian Troll”. I thought Facebook set the bar low - but I think TikTok has found a lower level.

Here is the link for his tomorrow (Saturday March 12, 2022) morning’s live stream. You can go there now to ask questions in the comments:

Well let me try to end on a positive note. Well before that - let me mention a few things regarding the Pandemic. Its still here. Despite the mask mandates etc. shutting off the Virus is still here. The new virus combines Omicron’s ability to spread infection with Delta’s ability to kill or at least make one sick, including with Long Covid. Many of us have yet to receive our Booster Shot and for those of us who did, we might be at the point where our immunity is starting to wane. I suspect that the BA2 Omicron Wave will be as sudden and as intense as the one that is just ending.

Putin’s war has created conditions for this pandemic to accelerate by forcing many to flee or hide in large masses. Its easy to skip masking and social distancing when artillery shells are landing in your neighborhood. Someone posted a black and white picture on Facebook that was of fleeing Ukrainians in a packed train station and asked “Is this 1941 or the Present Day?” The difference between then and now is that we weren’t in the midst of a Pandemic back then. These are also the kinds of environments that produce new and deadlier variants.

11 years ago today Japan suffered the huge earthquake. The Fukushima Disaster started then - the reactors blew up a few days later. I hope they get the power to the Chernobyl Plant restored tonight. Some were saying that the Russians were planning on bombing the site to turn it into a large dirty bomb - and then blame this on the Ukrainians.

Hmmm. you might have to wait until my next post for any kind of positive notes. Tonight’s brain numbing exercise will be to stream a few episodes of the somewhat grainy and harmless Colombian comedic telenovela Pecados Capitales (Deadly Sins) on Netflix. Fortunately we don’t have to find anything new to watch for awhile as there are around 160 episodes and we just started it.

I hope there is a hero in the Kremlin who has read his or her Shakespeare.