Our 2022 Christmas Letter

A long time ago when the World was young, two momentous events resulted in Alice and I both reaching eighty years of age this year. Alice, being more impatient, reached 80 first in March, provoking her beautiful daughters, Jeanette and Debbie, to fill our Gualala home with celebrants. 

 

Granddaughters Josie and Savannah, Me, Grandson Daniel, Alice, Grandson Kevin, Jeanette, First Husband Hans, Debbie, Grandson Jack, Son-in-law Kieran

 

If asked about this family birthday photo, Alice would say that it “tickles her tummy.” Hans and I are retired, Hans from captaining the Larkspur ferry, me from the Air Force and sundry other activities. Alice is semi-retired from the very successful corporation she founded, Vulcan Wire. Jeanette, Kieran, and Debbie are gainfully employed, as is eldest grandson Kevin in commodities and landlording in Minneapolis. Savannah, Daniel, Jack, and Josie are in a variety of college pursuits. We recently visited Savannah in Charleston, South Carolina, where she is in a graduate nursing program.

Birthday Girl

Each candle is doing the work of ten!

 

When my turn came in July, Alice pulled out all the stops, rented the Gualala Community Center, had Leslie Bates cater heavy hors d'oeuvres, and hosted a hundred of our friends and family. Almost all family from her birthday attended plus my younger brother Ron and wife Kathy. 

Andy Johnston telling tall tales about our Good Old Days

Also well represented were my Lions and Rotary friends, fellow musical performers, neighbors, and buddy Andy Johnston, who I first “met” in 1958 as we knocked each other around playing high school eight-man football, Laytonville vs. Point Arena. Andy and I faced each other twice, in 1958 and 1959, and my team lost both times. Andy makes sure I never forget.

Birthday Boy is undaunted by the huge candle 

and enormous (full sheet) carrot cake

 

Leading a Martinelli apple juice toast

With help from Chucky at Gualala Market, guests could also imbibe wine and beer

In January my eldest son Bruce and wife Lisa visited us in Gualala for the first time. Bruce hadn’t been in the area since we all visited my Pop and stepmother Ruth in Point Arena when we came back from Hawaii in 1982. My younger sons Scott and Jeffrey haven’t been here since then, but we hope Jeffrey can visit in January.

 

During the year we made frequent trips to our closest metropolis, Santa Rosa (75 miles away), for medical matters. Alice fortunately had minor cataracts that required cornea replacement surgery, as I had two years ago. Her eyesight is now that of a 26-year old. However, another problem, a pinched nerve in her back radiating pain to her right leg, is still in the process of repair.

May was a busy month with trips to Chico for Savannah's graduation from Chico State's nursing school and then to Walnut Creek for Josie's graduation from Las Lomas High School.

Savannah's boyfriend Eric, Hans, Jeanette, Jack, Josie, Me, Savannah, Debbie, Alice, Daniel, Kieran

    Good friend and neighbor Donna, Josie the Graduate, Debbie, and Alice

 

Alice, Jack, Daniel, Jeanette, Donna, Kieran, and Savannah

Ron and I. I was much bigger than Ron - his nicknames were "Peanuts" and later "Runt" - until about age 13, then he passed me and grew to 6' 5" as I stopped at 6' 2". Some much shorter friends still call him "Runt"

In June we visited my younger brother Ron and his wife Kathy at their home in Eureka for his 79th birthday. Every year we spend almost a month the same age because the doctor told Mom that she couldn't have any more children after I was born caesarean. Mom didn't want me to be a lonely, only child, and told that doctor, "Put a zipper in that incision, I'll be right back." Eleven months and four days later brother Ronald was born, the most wonderful gift Mom and Pop ever gave me.

We ended this short trip with a visit to my middle son, Scott, in nearby Fortuna.

A very good friend, Dick Soule, turned 100 the day after I did 80, and my Gualala Rotary Club honored him and his sweet wife Ellen at a luncheon meeting in the Gualala Community Center.

In August we went to Claremont for a Celebration of Life memorial for Alice's dear friend of almost sixty years, Miranda Chan, hosted by her daughters Yun-Lan and Oi-Lan. Then we went to Beverley Hills and the La Brea tar pits that have fascinated me ever since I read about them in grammar school over seventy years ago. Although Alice was an early Valley Girl, living in Tarzana and going to school and college until she married Hans in 1962, and I was born in nearby Torrance and lived a couple of years in Long Beach, we didn't recognize anything but agreed that Hollywood had seen better days. And we had fun regardless. We continued our Gualala routine of walking about three miles every day.

 

We went to Madame Tussaud’s and recognized almost all the celebrates depicted as long as they were famous over fifty years ago. 

 

As I was making moves on Marilyn – watched by Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart - Alice and John Travolta were steppin’ out.

            

The travel bug bit again – it’s actually been attacking us since we got the first of our five Covid shots in January 2021, so in September we went to Kiawah Island near Charleston, SC. Besides many miles of sandy beaches, the island is composed of golf courses garnished with tennis courts. Since we don’t indulge in golf and tennis, we had the most interesting parts of the island all to ourselves – especially when Hurricane Ian arrived, as a tropical storm, and all the restaurants and the premier hotel closed. What was left of Ian passed directly over us with some strong wind gusts that blew a few branches off trees and delivered 3.5 inches of rain. A stronger storm hit Gualala in mid-September and did not cause us to change any of our daily walks and playing ball with Radar on Cook’s Beach. 

 

With the empty prestigious Sanctuary Hotel behind Alice, we awaited what was left of Hurricane Ian on an otherwise totally deserted eight-mile sandy beach

The view from our villa. Alice loved the screened deck, but especially valued having two bath rooms, so that will be a requirement for future trips like our Barbados vacation this coming February.

 The view from our deck. The fawn didn’t molest the alligator.

 We spotted Albert sunning near a bike path as we peddled 

I assembled and mailed out over 225 Christmas cards and hope that none will be returned with the notation "No forwarding address on file."

Vulcan Wire, Inc., the company Alice founded in the 1970's, had its annual Christmas party at Paradiso Restaurant, San Leandro. hosted by CEO Mike Graffio. You can read all about it in Alice's memoir, The Lady With Balls.

From left, me, Alice, Jennifer Stafford and Edward Valenzuela (across from each other), Nicole Clark and her Mom, Mike Graffio, Chuck and Teresa Rodrigues, Steve and Cindy Brandt

From left, Deena Shine across from husband Nick, brothers Salvador and Gerardo Martinez, 

brothers Victor and Hector Hernandez

From left, Nate Rowland, Smita Patel and son, Kenji and Shauna Rodriguez, Pepe Balderrama

Of course I will be updating this Christmas letter as we celebrate Gualala Rotary and Lions holiday festivities, and wrapping up this Christmas with family cheer in Walnut Creek and Lafayette.

To my schoolmates from Point Arena High School, I plan our reunion July 22 at the Gualala Community Center and hope to hear from all who can make it - and from those who can't.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good year!

 

Radar says "Woof (Party!)"

The Lancet response to Bjørn Lomborg

A Bjørn Lomborg Wall Street Journal article (Climate Change and the Lancet’s ‘Heat Death’ Deception With COP27 approaching, {Lancet} claims rising temperatures have killed people but ignores that they appear to have saved far more.) criticized a Lancet study that found a increasing heat deaths among old people without adjusting for the fact that there are a lot more old people now, thanks to medical and environmental progress as a result of fossil fuel use.

Lancet then responded by going wildly off topic: "Behind this discussion lies an ethical conflict. Older generations have enjoyed enormous benefits from industrialization, mostly based on fossil fuels. But global heating from fossil-fuel greenhouse gases leads to extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, wildfires, reduced crop yields, increased risk of infectious disease, biodiversity loss and sea-level rise, all with effects on health and survival. We are putting our children’s future in the balance. The generational injustice can’t be ignored."

Now it's not the old people, who are actually doing better because of fossil fueled progress, but the young in a distant future who are threatened by climate change events that, with all the scrutiny today, still haven't materialized. In fact, this chart shows that our children's risks caused by climate change have declined dramatically over the past 100 years of rapidly expanding fossil fuel use.

Heat and cold deaths?

The Lancet is hoist on its own petard.

Droughts?

Floods and droughts?

Extreme weather events?

Wildfires?

Reduced crop yields?

 

Increased risk of infectious disease?

Apparently the Lancet physicians never heard of the pandemics that killed hundreds of millions in colder periods of past centuries: the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) that killed 200 million over six hundred years ago; Smallpox killed 56 million about 500 years ago; Spanish Flu killed almost 50 million only one hundred years ago; the Plague of Justinian killed perhaps 50 million 1,500 years ago; and AIDS/HIV so far has killed around 30 million. 

Of the roughly 259 pandemics spanning the past several thousand years, the probable link to climate change is rapid increase in population and cities after the end of the last glacial period (Ice Age) about 11,700 years ago.

Sea level rise?

Historic sea level higher for most of the past 3,000 years.

Honolulu sea level?

Honolulu rate of sea level rise is six inches per century and steady.

The key points of the Lancet response are all unsupported.

So I wrote a letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal:

Editor

The Lancet response to Bjorn Lomborg’s article (Climate Change and the Lancet’s ‘Heat Death Deception’” was breathtaking in its deceptions. Its portent of fossil fuel doom didn’t acknowledge the 99% decrease in climate related deaths during the past 100 years due to wealth creation and development as a result of fossil fuel use. Placing the present in the context of the last 1,000 years, we find in the past greater weather events such as droughts and floods and over ten times the acreage burnt by wildfires annually. Rather than “reduced crop yields”, the world now produces record harvests without increased acres planted on an almost annual basis. Sea levels, now lower than during half of the past 10,000 years, are increasing at a rate of six inches per century with no signs of acceleration, per the world’s tide gauge records. 

 

The Lancet letter then goes off tangent about deaths caused by small particulate matter air pollution. Unmentioned by Lancet, these deaths are primarily due to burning wood and dung to cook and heat in enclosed spaces and have been since humans mastered fire. The growing use of natural gas and electricity generated from burning fossil fuels reduces these deaths dramatically.

 

“ Physician (Lancet), heal thyself!”

Violent Crime Highest in Blue Cities - Paul Krugman's Pants on Fire!

Lately several liberal columnists – Paul Krugman is one – have written that the crime rate is higher in many Red than in Blue states. So I decided to check this out, and since in many large cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco many crimes go unreported or not charged – a Liberal thing that reduces crime rates while actual crime soars – I decided to examine murders. 

And I found that Krugman was right – in a way. Many of the highest murder rates are in Red states, Mississippi (20.5) and Louisiana (19.9) leading the way. (Link)

 

However, a nonstate, Washington, DC, has the highest murder rate by far, 32.78 murders per 100,000 people. I had already done some research about murder rates by race in 2019 and found that Blacks, who are 14.2% of the population, commit 49% of murders. (Link)

 

On that basis, I created a hypothesis that a state’s crime rate – at least for murder, the most heinous crime – may have more to do with where persons who murder at a high rate reside versus whether those states are Red or Blue. That led me to tread on ground that only few would dare, the race aspect of the crime of murder.

 

A comparison of homicides with Black populations by state showed a strong correlation of density of Black population and murder rate. Washington, DC, Mississippi, and Louisiana were numbers 1, 2 and 3 on both lists, and only two states with murder rates over 12.3, Oklahoma and New Mexico, were outside of the South and Mid-West areas with high Black population percentages – over the US average of 14.2%. (Link)

 

At this point I was tempted to add Krugman and several other Liberal columnists to a category “Liars by Omission.” But there’s more.

 

Krugman et al also charged that crime was higher in many Red state cities, and again they were right – sort of. A list of the twenty cities with highest violent crime rates in 2022 included eight in Red states and a dozen in Blue, but eighteen of the twenty cities had Democrat administrations, one was non-partisan, and one (Anchorage) was Republican. More Liberal columnists lying by omission, thereby earning a place in the Liars category. (Link)

By exposing the obvious racial component in violent crime, in the eyes of Liberals I’ve earned a place in the Racist category. Even if I’m right I’m wrong, judgmental, and thoughtless too. They are sure that White systemic racism is the cause and I guess that is why ninety percent of murdered Blacks are killed by other Blacks, and both victim and murderer are usually young males. Only eight percent of Black murders are by Whites, so “Black Lives Don’t Matter” seems to be the real Blacks’ slogan.

 

And before Blacks can say, to paraphrase Flip Wilson, “The (White) Devil made me do it!”, about 90% of the Black vote goes to Democrats, and Democrats run those high violent crime cities. Black Votes Matter!

 

In 2019 the Blacks killed by police total was 251, or 10% of the total of 2,574 Blacks killed by other Blacks. (Link)

 

The Washington Post disputes this statistic and publishes a study showing that police kill about 1,000 per year, of which about 270 are Blacks. The Post found that “The rate at which black Americans are killed by police is more than twice as high as the rate for white Americans.” That would seem justifiable, since Blacks commit murder at a rate 3.45 times the rate for all others. (Link)

 

It would be informative to know how many of the Blacks killed by police were in the course of violence being committed by Blacks on other Blacks.