Bruce Fette

Hello WHHS,

Sorry to repost this but it seems like the message forum has been rather quiet again.

So this is a call for new topics to enliven this forum.  

Let us hear from all of you, what are you up to now? Whats your favorite thing? How do you plan to celebrate your next holiday. How about July 4th? Where will you be? How will you celebrate the birth of a nation where the design of the government was specifically focused on insuring democracy for the people rather than being run by the whims of "King George"?

Jeff Daum

OK Bruce, good thought.  Now that everyone in our family except the little ones have been Covid vaccinated, we are travelling to visit.  We went up to Seattle to see our 3 month old granddaughter and 'west coast' son and daughter-in-law.  It was fantastic to see and be with them in person.

Now we are on the east coast where we will end up visiting with our 'east coast' son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters.

The east coast trip is showing the ripple effects of Covid.  On our flight from Vegas to Charleston, was changed at the last minute and we arrived 3 hours later than planned.  No problem, but we did not know how lucky we were- on the day we flew and the next day, over 1000 flights apparently were cancelled due to lack of crew etc.

We had heard stories of issues with rental cars not being available, so were a bit apprehensive when we arrived late for our rental. We were surprised to get a brand new car- it had just 3 miles on it and was manufactured less than a month before.  Since we are 'lam' for over a month, that was a very nice outcome.

As mentioned we started in Charleston and are heading up the coast, seeing friends along the way, playing golf, enjoying sightseeig and sampling local cooking.  Several things have become clear resulting from Covid:  many of the restaurants, hotels etc., are woefully short staffed and/or have new hires who are not well trained.

It also seems that many places are using Covid as an excuse to charge inflated rates and provide limited services.

But it is great to be traveling again, seeing far flung friends and family.

Jeff Daum

Thanks for the invite Bruce!  We are already up in Maine.  Will have to do it another time.  Of course if you are in Vegas, give us a shout.

Paul Simons

 

Bruce - I can't blame anyone for roughly say the first 350 years or so - from when steam power began to be used to pump water out of coal mines - to when people like James Hansen began warning us what was happening to the air and water temperatures and what the consequences would be. But ignoring him, and others like him, and mocking and vilifying them and rudely dismissing their conclusions - those are the acts of criminals. Lately with people like Putin and Bolsonaro and Xi and the like - criminals - in charge of countries we are in deep trouble. In my opinion politicians who accept money and in return block immediate action to stop the catastrophe need to be removed, tried for crimes against humanity and accorded the most severe penalty.
 

Everything was here - air, water, vegetation, animals, coal, iron, copper, oil, uranium, bauxite, manganese and on and on - everything that an intelligent species needed to create the technological world we have. At first we didn't know. But now, like the tobacco companies that lied and denied that smoking had anything to do with lung cancer, the fossil fuel industry including big names like Koch are still lying and denying even as ancient sequoias are burning down and rain forests are clear-cut and it's a record breaking 100 degrees in Siberia and 108 in Seattle.

Can it be turned around? Or is it already a viciously spiraling loop - polar ice melts, more heat is absorbed, more ice melts, more heat, and it can't be stopped?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/19/james-hansen-nasa-scientist-climate-change-warning

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Over the years, I have frequently paged through the Rembrancers from our Effie year and, of course, our senior year while helping with our class reunions.  I just recently met someone who graduated in 1961, which was our freshman year. While paging through the yearbook to find her picture, I came upon a picture of the JUNIOR HIGH SOCIAL COMMITTEE.  I have no memory of this committee, or it's purpose. The caption shows Judy Roberts as president. Just curious if anyone else May remember.  I guess the committee didn't last too long. 

Judy Holtzer (Knopf)

Did you plan a prom or dance?

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

Judy: Nope!  We were only freshman.  I don't have a clue.  

Ira Goldberg

Ann, I want to say re. the photo and to us all, "Oh, the places you'll go!"  - Dr. Suess (of course) 

Thomas Lounds Jr.

Here's one to think about. I recenty heard something described as being "....two times smaller than something else...". What would our WHHS English teachers like Miss Lappa or Miss Hutchison have thought about this fairly common corruption of the language.  Your thoughts?

Steven Levinson

Ann, regarding your Post #5694, I repeat a sentiment I expressed on this forum years ago:  I so wish we were in contact with Judy Roberts.  I liked her a lot, but didn't know how to express that at the time.  She would recount facts about me, gained from her grandmother, that blew my mind, in Miss Gerwig's classroom in the Colonies.  I never pursued the relationship the way I would now.  You indicated back then your understanding of why it was that Judy was incommunicado.  It makes me very sad.  I miss her.

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

Responding to Ann's post #6794: When I read your post, I also didn't remember there being a Junior High Social Committee. Then, I looked at the photo and saw that I was a member!! I thought about it and think that our one event might have been a Junior High Dance in the lunch room. Of course, at our age, memories can be deceiving. 

Laura Reid (Pease)

Ann, I also don't remember that committee, but was really interested to see Elizabeth Pearson's photo!  She lived down the street from me when we lived in Mt. Lookout (we later moved to College Hill).  We were good friends; she was more serious than I was about everything at that time in our lives, but we walked to and from the bus stop together every day and spent a lot of time together.  I have completely lost track of her, along with Ann (Bunny) Black who was also a good friend during that same time.  Friends during your formative years are so important and really have an influence on you; these girls were good friends and I remember them both dearly.

Dale Gieringer

     I don't recall being lectured about "two times smaller."  Presumably it means half as big.  

      I do remember more than one teacher condemining "more unique."  However,  I've found it hard to follow this stricture over the years.   There are different ways in which something can be unique.   The British Guiana One Cent Magenta stamp of 1856  is unique.  So is a three cent U.S. stamp with a torn corner postmarked "Rabbit Hash Ky Feb 15 1955."   The market price will tell you which is uniquer.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

I think there was a ninth grade dance.  I only remember the one in the class before ours and I know who I went with.  My mom was in the hospital and my aunt, who lived next door, helped me find a dress to wear. It was such an emotional event I do remember that but not much about our class.  

David Buchholz

On another subject...

After reading Gordon Chang's book, The Ghosts of Gold Mountain, the story of the Chinese immigrants who came to California in the mid-nineteenth century, hoping to find riches only to find that their inability to understand English, anti-Asian prejudice, left them with little options beyond laying railroad tracks through the Sierra Nevada mountains, carving train tunnels out of mountains with hammers, picks, and dynamite.  The tunnels, now abandoned, are open to hiking.  We did just that last week. And yes, I took my camera.

This is tunnel #6.  It took almost two years to build and took many Chinese lives.

A review of the book

https://stanfordmag.org/contents/book-review-ghosts-of-gold-mountain

I have a few more photographs and text on my website.  

http://www.davidkbuchholz.com/new-blog/2021/7/11/gold-mountain

Bruce Fette

David,

Long ago I was an avid Spelinker in Arizona. I tried taking movies and photos in some spectacular Arizona caves. But the problem of lighting the shots was an increadible challenge at the time. I built my own remote flash mechanism so that when the camera flashed, then other flashbulbs would also go off.   Even so, it was mostly very difficult to do justice to those Arizona caves.  They swallow the light!

I see that you have developed a superb process for the accomplishment  of lighting cave shots. I presume it to involve use of long duration open shutter, and then walking down the corridor a specific number of paces, and triggering a modern hand held flash unit at integer multiples of the pace count. With Beautiful results!

Others: Anyone with an interest in what engineers believe could be useful to address climate change, please contact me personally.

David Buchholz

Bruce,

Occam's Razor:  

1. the principle (attributed to William of Occam) that in explaining a thing no more assumptions should be made than are necessary. The principle is often invoked to defend reductionism or nominalism.

    

   Sadly, I would love for you to think that I had illuminated the tunnels as you wrote.  And indeed, such a thing, I suspect, could be done as you described.  However, if you look at the photographs posted, you'll see that there are small rectangles of light at regular intervals down the right side of the tunnels.  These are windows, and they provided all the illumination I needed.  Yes, a tripod was necessary to create the depth of field with a long shutter speed (even at ISO 500) of about five seconds.  These were all taken with natural light.

    

   In my business I worked with strobes and "slaves." (Ann, please forgive.  Slaves are doodads mounted on strobe lights that enable additional multiple lights to flash simultaneously with the light the photographer is connected to).  (Oh damn, a sentence ending with a preposition!)  More mea culpas.  I've used as many as seven lights in some situations to create scenes, but in the tunnels, no light, no nothing.   

    

   Even the first photo of Tunnel #6...the light illuminating the rocks at the left and right of the photo is coming from an entrance.  1/4 mile further on is the end of the tunnel, and the bright light at the center of the image is coming from the sunlight on that side.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

No offense taken Dave. I've worked with computers networks, although they now refer to the "master" server as the "main" server. Beautiful picture by the way! 

Gail Weintraub (Stern)

David R. Schneider posted this on FaceBook today:

"Today, I found out that my best friend from childhood, Paul Bernheimer, passed yesterday. We both went to North Avondale Elementary School, we started at Walnut Hills High School together, and he transferred to Woodward after the eigth grade. Even after high school and college, he was part of our lives. He was able to visit with us in Ft. Myers one Christmas, but his health started to deteriorate shortly thereafter- Parkinson’s. Thank you Paul for being you and being a beacon to so many of your friends!"

I join David and all our classmates in remembering Paul. May his memory always be a blessing. RIP. ~Gail 

Dale Gieringer

    A DRY REPORT:   This summer we're grappling with the worst drought since I arrived in California some 50 years ago (actually, the worst in the state's history, and worst in a thousand years according to climatologists).  A few scenes:

A supposed marsh and wetlands bird sanctuary in Coyote Hills Park:   

Trees are dying all around the East Bay open space park trails where we hike.

Some of you may recall these scenes from our neighborhood hillside

(A) in mid-April

(B) On Memorial Day

(C) Goats arrived yesterday on their annual brush clearance and fire prevention mission to the hill.

So far, we've evaded the smoke from the fires.  Did any of you downwind to the east see or smell it?  Bracing for possible planned electricity outages.  The largest hydro station in the state may be out of commission due to record low water.   

Paul Simons

Dale - thanks for the photojournalism. I wish I could return the favor with a photo I took myself of the sun at about 4:00 PM a couple of days last week. You could look right at it in a cloudless sky. It was orange. Not the usual yellow-white but a reddish orange and luminosity diminished by the concentration of smoke in the air over Philly. People can believe whatever they want - it's irrelevant. The nightmare is just starting, here and now. I was filled with grief for those who were burned to death, trapped in the fire last year and if I have any emotion left it will be the same this year.

Becky Payne (Shockley)

Thanks, Dale and Paul, for those powerful and sobering photos. They underscore the urgency of the need to respond to all the dreadful news coming out of the west (and the rest of the planet as well). 

Paul Simons

I'm - what's the word - relieved, encouraged, maybe even glad that you recognize the problem Becky. It isn't getting better as the photos of the Lake Oroville Reservoir in Northern California illustrate. I heard on public radio that the Amazon rainforest, thought of as "the lungs of the world" because it soaked up carbon in the atmosphere and released oxygen has become a net emitter of carbon because the person that runs Brazil one Jair Bolsonaro has encouraged clear cutting it to allow palm oil producers and cattle ranchers to use it. And China and India continue building more and more coal-fired plants. However we can feel better about what's happening here which is more renewable energy. My dream has been solar panels on the roof, batteries in the cellar and a plug in the garage for my electric car but I live in an apartment so it won't happen.

Lake Oroville, CA. 
The first photo is from 3 years  ago. 
The 2nd photo was taken April 27 2021. 
The 3rd was taken last week.

This is terrifying.

Stephen Collett

This is my submission to the annual summer photo contest for the national leftist newspaper I am reading, "Class Struggle"/Klassekampen. I am with friends on a small mountain that I see from my kitchen window, from my house near the lighthouse at the far back of the photo.

Ira Goldberg

Here we see Mount Shasta on June 23, 2021. Its snowy peak's top half has loomed above Northern California for as many years as I've travelled I-5 and well before. No longer is the road blocked at the 6000 foot snow line.