Return to Valcour

Valcour Island

Hooray! We made it back to Valcour yet another year. In terms of annual milestones, the day we return to Valcour has the biggest emotional impact. It's bigger than Christmas or Thanksgiving. I believe it is the same for Libby.

Our plan is to stay three nights for this trip. Hopefully, during the summer we will return to Valcour several times.

Could we give up the cruising life and live on Valcour? No, Valcour is owned by NY State and it is designated forever wild. Nevertheless, I have been daydreaming about living on Valcour since the first time I visited it in 1975. On the other hand, I have never been on Valcour in winter; doing so might take the polish off my dream.

By the way, one day before returning to Valcour, Libby and I returned from two days camping in The Green Mountain National Forest. That was nice, but camping in a dense forest blocks views of the sky and the sun, and the valleys and the mountains.

Summer weather has finally arrived. 80F weather in the valleys, and 70F on the mountain. But the lake temperature is still very cold, only 59F. Probably no swimming for us this weekend.

Here is Tarwathie Junior preparing to leave.

 

 

This Cold Year; Mere Child's Play`

BTV, Burlington Airport

The weather this year has been abnormally cold.  It began during the winter in Marathon.   I complained about it here on this blog.

It continued when Libby and I wanted to go camping in the mid-Atlantic states on our way north.   The cold weather defeated us and caused us to cancel our plans.

After arriving in Vermont, I thought that we were past the cold spring.  We had some nice days, and May 20 (the day of Sara's wedding) was lovely.   But since then it has turned cold again.

I in particular am eager to take our canoe out to Valcour Island.  But the weather has been so cold and the lake so rough that we can't. (I hope to try again next weekend)

But before leaping to the conclusion that all of this is due to Global Cooling ;-), I heard a very interesting story on Vermont Public Radio, about 1816 in Vermont.  You can listen to the recording here http://digital.vpr.net/post/1816-year-without-summer, or read about it here The Summer(?) of 1816, or here Year Without a Summer.  Indeed, it was not just Vermont, but the whole globe's weather was abnormal that year.

By September, most of Vermont had been a full three months without rain. Fires which swept through parched forest land filled the air with acrid smoke and a general darkness. Another killing frost struck the final blow on the tenth, wiping out whatever had managed to survive to that point.

This having been the worst of a string of bad years, many moved west, thinking the weather had turned permanently. Richford was nearly a ghost town, the remaining few barely surviving; Waterford had so few residents that no Town Meetings were held for several years; Granby's population fell so low that the town gave up its incorporation. Unable to sell their land, many just up and left. New immigration eventually brought in people who had no memory of the hard times. 

Perhaps scariest of all, 1816 Vermonters reported that from June all through the summer, that the intensity of daylight diminished noticeably day by day. Religious people would of course leap to the conclusion that this was "the end of days" or the Apocalypse, or that the Sun was being extinguished.

You see, 1816 was a year after the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies.  But local people in Vermont would have known nothing about that back then.

The alternating hot/cold weather in 1816 killed almost all the crops.  Farmers sheared their sheep, but where then forced to bundle the wool around the naked sheep to keep them from freezing. Near starvation was the result, and a mass migration of Vermonters to the American Midwest was triggered.

It is an amazing story and it makes the 2016 weather seem like mere child's play.   It makes me wonder what the result would be if a similar eruption happened today when we have seven billion mouths to feed (compared to one billion in 1816).

0800 today, looked like the weather was about to break finally.

Same view, two hours later.  Cold and drizzly. No mountains visible.

Dawn in Low Ceres Orbit

South Burlington, VT

You may not be aware of this.  The popular press has not paid much attention.  But at the moment, there is a stunning new success in science going on.

The Dawn unmanned spacecraft, has maneuvered itself into orbit around one of the biggest asteroids named Ceres.  Below is one of many close in photographs of the surface of Ceres.

In historical perspective, the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon is perhaps mankind's greatest achievements ever.  But the close up pictures of Pluto and Ceres  are nonetheless very major milestones.

By the way, en-route to Ceres, Dawn got a gravitational boost from Mars, and from another asteroid Vesta.

Are Regional Airports Viable?

South Burlington, VT

I recently wrote a blog post about the Burlington Airport (BTV), and how peaceful, quiet and comfortable it is.  My post was inspired by the stories and photos of horribly long security lines in major airports.

It made me wonder, "Is BTV a luxury doomed to die because it is underused?"   So I did a bit of research, to compare the finances of BTV, and a major airport Denver (DIA).

So, the answer is that the cost per passenger at BTV is about twice as much as DIA even though DIA has 88 times as many passengers.  That sounds completely reasonable.  In fact, because of the economies of scale, I expected a bigger cost difference.

So, based on this tiny bit of research, I conclude that small regional airports like BTV should not be threatened.  Their costs are reasonable, and the big airports have to send the passengers somewhere, the flying public would fly much less if there were only 12 major airports in the whole USA.

Caveat: My research is not robust.  I should have included several other regional and major airports.  I should have considered the contributions of the VT Air National Guard to BTV's costs.  I should have considered the effect of the nearly new and massive airport terminal at DIA.  I'm not a researcher, just a curious blogger.

One more thing.  In a fit of excessive political correctness, BTV took down the "FAMILY BATHROOM" sign and replaced it with this sign.

Election or Revolution? (Rev 2)

South Burlington, VT

I don't like writing about politics on this blog. However, in this case I have been waiting for many months for someone else to write and publish this essay, but I haven't seen it. So I feel compelled to point out what I think is an obvious and important point that is not being discussed.

Why does half the country support Trump for President?
Trump acts like a bull in a china shop.  He is reckless.  It baffles most Democrats and many Republicans. It doesn't make sense, if you view Trump as a leader. But if you view Trump not as a leader but as a weapon, it makes more sense.

The key to understanding is to shift your focus from Trump to Trump supporters. Of course, not all Trump supporters are alike.   They have a variety of reasons.  This post discusses what I believe to be the reasons of the majority of Trump supporters.

What do they want? 

I believe that a very big segment of the country is very unhappy with government, especially the Federal Government.  They are in a revolutionary mood.  But violent overthrow of the US Government is not in their thoughts.  This is a non-violent revolution.  

In my opinion they would like to accomplish the following:

• To destroy the political parties that have ignored them.  Especially the Republican Party that betrayed them.
• To stomp on American Democracy (which has served them so poorly.)
• To seriously disrupt or even to topple the government. 

Their actual list of grievances and the source of dissatisfaction was best explained IMO by "Trump's America" by Charles Murray.  I am very impressed by Mr. Murray's essay.  You should take the time to read it.  

Deep and widespread dissatisfaction with government is the fuel upon which social upheavals and revolutions feed.

This was all expressed poignantly by one Trump supporter with a sign that said, "Burn Baby Burn".  I think that well expresses the mood of many Trump supporters.

If you view Trump as a weapon of the revolutionaries, rather than as their leader, it all makes more sense.

A non-violent revolution: what would that look like? 

Violent revolution is not likely to be seriously proposed ever in our lifetimes. It is illegal. Even advocacy of violent overthrow is expressly forbidden in The Constitution. Yet the right to do so is expressly cited as our inalienable right in the Preamble To The Declaration of Independence. I even wrote a book about that apparent contradiction. It is called Jefferson's Right.

It is not a question of possession of firearms. Modern people are just too indoctrinated in obeying the law to think about violent revolution. Non-violent revolution is therefore the only choice, but what the heck does that mean? There are no provisions in our constitution or our law for non-violent revolution. Nobody teaches us in school how to go about it. So suppose you had a lot of people in a revolutionary mood but with no idea about how to go about it, but having no leader, no direction, what then?

My theory is that they would just want to lash out and do whatever they could to hurt and punish the government and the country. Electing such a divisive person as President would certainly do that. So in that light, I find that Trump's support is perfectly sensible and logical.  Trump is not the leader of the dissatisfied, he is their weapon.

Revolutions are intrinsically destructive. 

Trump opponents often ask Trumpsupporters, "What happens if he does get elected?" That ignores the dynamics of typical revolutions. Revolutions focus first on destroying what they don't like. The constructive part, building something better post-revolution is considered only after-the-fact. In Jefferson's Right, I showed a list of 405 revolutions in history. Very few of them started with a plan of what to do post-revolution. My point is that it makes no sense to ask the Trump supporter revolutionaries what happens after the election. They would like to topple the government, but they do not want to think about what happens next if they succeed.

This non-violent revolution will fail because the revolutionaries don't control the language. 

We live in an information age. Information is all powerful. The idea of a revolution is dangerous to the self interests of all politicians, all political parties, and all media outlets. But those are the people who control the language of what we see and hear in public. They insist that what we are experiencing is not a revolution, but rather a simple election. You may hear Trump or Sanders supporters speak of "revolutionary reforms", but the simple noun revolution and what that implies is not spoken.

Without control of the language, the revolution will not attract supporters from the skeptical.  I really believe that if the headlines described the events of 2016 as a revolution rather than just another election, that the revolution would gain much more support.

Brilliant Strategy???:

Suppose Trump wins, becomes President, and starts carrying out the things he threatened to do.  What effect would that have on the American public?   Well, I think it is pretty obvious that the liberals would become even more outraged than they are today by Trump's candidacy.  They would also conclude that they want to topple the government.   In effect, they would be swayed to join forces with the conservative revolutionaries.  A revolution supported by 35% of the people could gain support of an additional 35%.  That would be unstoppable.

Wow, how brilliant is that as a strategy? But brilliance is not a word that we can apply to a movement that lacks a leader and organization.  There is no one planning strategy.  If I am right, this revolutionary movement still lacks any leader, any spokesman, any organization.

So, what do I think should happen? 

I don't know. I am very libertarian. I would like to see the size and power of government much reduced. But I do not want true revolution and anarchy. If the day comes when the revolution confronts me with the question "Are you with us or against us?" I'll have to say with.  But for now, I have more than two options, I'm afraid that my option of choice for this November will be to vote for Deez Nuts.