The rain has stopped here in the idyllic Sierra foothills. This is the first rain of the rainy season, nearly two months late. In California if it don’t rain during the winter then it just don’t rain at all because it never rains in the Summer. Down in LA, rain is irrelevant or worse, a damn nuisance because it just floods the gutters and runs into the ocean after washing the oil residue off the roads and causing chaos on the freeways. The water is all imported from elsewhere. It’s a convenient arrangement.
California Aqeduct
In the hinterlands of Northern California its different. The rivers run all year round and until recently nobody metered water service. It was all you can use for a flat monthly fee. Folks up here are resentful of Southern California who, they think, want to steal their water. (One of the three SoCal aqueducts takes water from the north to the south). More than anything else, water divides California. Periodically proposals surface to divide California into two more homogenous states but they always founder. Northerners want to cut all ties to the south and stop sending precious water south but unfortunately for them Southerners have more population. There are so many more Southerners that a single California state will always provide water to the south no matter what kind of fuss the north puts up.
Originally posted 2011-03-09 06:09:27. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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Our leader Justin here at Cantankerous Old Coots keeps us hacks jumping. I toe the line pretty well remembering all the old tricks I learned at work for keeping the boss happy. Bob is another matter altogether. Bob is a ‘my way or the highway’ kind of guy and sometimes it’s all Justin can do to keep Bob focused and on target- or even present. I rail about Justin from time to time but so far, he’s been the one keeping the wheels on the bus here at COC, slave driver though he may me.
What with being a stay at home Dad, web entrepreneur and running his own blog, you can imagine that Justin’s life is full of challenges. Mere mortals like me constantly ask; How does he cope? How does he maintain his balance and joi de vivre amidst this busy cacophony? I confess that I don’t have a clue. It would be beyond my meager abilities which are strained daily just pulling my weight here at Coots.
Still from time to time even Justin needs to fill his tank and refresh his spirit. He retreats to a quiet place and lets his spirit flow. He plays his kettlebells.
Justin will never acknowledge his talent. He disclaims any praise or attention and refuses to perform publicly. But his skill is legendary. No one has yet captured Justin performing either on video or audio. He keeps his light under a bushel, so to speak. Still, careful research has uncovered kettlebell masters who inspire and encourage Justin to grow his talent. You can get a small idea about the power of Justin’s talent from these videos . These powerful performances will give you an idea of what a kettlebell master like Justin can do.
I hope everyone had a good break from the regular cantankerosity and enjoyed Heathers work. She has some good rants on things us other Coots don’t think about.
Is anyone else out there getting tired of winter? I know it has been very erratic around much of the US and still continues to be…strange weather to say the least. Next Wednesday the weather prognosticator of all prognosticators will make his debut and tell us all whether we can look forward to 6 more weeks of winter or not. more…
The crack Coots News Team uncovered three good stories this week. Go figure! Weeks go by where the news just isn’t worth any attention and then we have three stories that deserve highlighting. I can’t decide if the news mongers are clueless rabble-rousers like the Wall Street protesters or fiendishly intelligent manipulators of public sentiment like our politicians. Anyway I had to make a choice today between Congress, the LA Unified School District and Germany. Any one of the three is abundantly scorn-worthy but I finally made a choice.
The winner is Germany.
Solar energy boondoggle
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It wasn’t even close. If there is a country that deserves to stand in the corner and wear a dunce cap, it is undeniably Germany. No other country comes close. The twentieth century should be dedicated to Germany, the instigator of our only two World Wars. Let’s just give them full credit. Germany invented World Wars and the two we experienced would never have happened without her. If we spent the first half of the twentieth century stopping those German World Wars, we spent the last half repairing the damage. There is just something terribly wrong about Germany. So much hubris, vanity, self congratulatory snobbery all wrapped up in a nice little package along with cuckoo clocks, strudel and cars you can’t afford. You couldn’t invent Germany.
