The immensity of it all still lingers...

Just some updates on what is going on on the Sourlands 8 days after hurricane Sandy.

It is SNOWING.  Many, many centimeters. We are having a freaking snowstorm, another nor'easter storm. I just heard the snowplow go by on the road outside, which is a very good sign.  (Both that it is a plow and that it is on a truck, i.e., trucks can get into the neighborhood now).

Our neighbors have their power back, it was fixed tonight.  We got internet back around the same time, which is pretty amazing.  The power and internet companies must actually have collaborated. Most likely the neighborhood is now accessible by fire trucks and the like.  They weren't this morning, but if they fixed the lines, then now, after 8 days, we can feel safer.  One road is probably still closed, but they are working on that too. Many of our neighbors do not have power yet though, because their powerlines were ripped out of their houses when trees feel on them.  It will take longer for them and I feel really sorry about all their troubles. The township has gotten lots of letters and calls from us about the situation, and it actually made a difference.  Good.

Bad news - Election results show that the two open seats on the township committee were won by the two republicans.  They won with only 50 votes more than the Democratic candidates, out of over 9000 votes cast.  Incredible. So, two more years of republicans running the town.  (Voting results for the Somerset county is here, and yes, Obama won in the county too.)  There is always The Swedish Party as an alternative for disillusioned Americans  :)
Very good news - Obama won the presidency again.  As someone said 'The republicans made sure that Obama would become a 2-term president'.  Presidents here can only be elected for 2 terms, so now he can focus on doing the right thing and not get reelected.  Like, put some bank fraud CEO's in jail, etc. :)  Mitt Romney seems to have disappeared instantaneously.  

The NJ railroad system suffered horrible losses.  Just look at the railroad bridge after the storm in the photo above (more info here).  Apparently they lost 1/3 of their locomotives and 1/4 of their passenger cars in the storm.  Imagine that.  That must be many hundreds of locomotives that are gone, so the commute to New York City will be hell for many months for many people.

I believe that the mental effects of Sandy will live on for decades in New Jersey.  People will try to be more self-sufficient.  Have more gasoline and generators ready. Get water bottles. Take weather reports seriously.  Value friends and family more.  Not trust township administrators and politicians as much.  Friends and relatives of friends of mine have lost everything.  Whole houses that washed away, and all that is left is a foundation.  Some people got their cars flooded.  Trees on roofs that cracked houses.  Horrific storm night memories, with fear of breaking windows in high-rises in NYC.  Children that lost everything.  It is just so incredibly sad, and maybe a fact of life because weather does exist and always have, but it seems so incredibly wasteful and sad.  I am sorry I am harping on on this, the hurricane I mean, but the rest of the world goes on, and we see it and are reminded about Sandy all the time.  Even if electric and internet and gasoline is soon back to normal, the New Jersey world has changed, permanently.  And so have we.

And finally, just some images to really show how big this storm was. 

(Image by NASA - more photos of Sandy from NASA here)

 

(Image by wunderground.com, a weather website)

(Image by NOAA)

Capital scenes (Washington DC)

In May this year I had to travel to Washington DC for a conference and took a few hours to see the sights:


The Washington Monument.  Impressive. 


The White House.  I wonder how many spy cameras that are in the flower beds. 


I wonder if the President ever sends out Secret Service to get him a Polish dog?  This cart was right next to the White House.


This anti-war tent vigil has been going on for three decades, every day, every hour, every minute.  It is right in front of the White House, and is more of a statement than a disturbance.  I wish we lived in a world with more peace.


Outside the US Department of Agriculture they had planted parsley in the flower beds, and it was flowering nicely and greenly. So appropriate and unusual.

Inside the USDA was a small museum about food history, which included this great quote:

 "...the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil." Abraham Lincoln

They also had a lot of old posters from World War I and II.


Don't waste Food.  We need these posters for today's consumers.


Lick the Platter Clean - I remember us kids saying we could lick our plates because our grandpa did it too.


There was also a little tiny exhibit about the old ice trains that transported blocks of ice for refrigeration around the country.  I am glad there are electric refrigerators nowadays, I wouldn't want to get back to a time when you had to handle 50 lbs (25 kg) ice blocks. 

Ponderings about now and the future

Here are some thoughts I wrote down while flying on a plane recently just after reading about the last ever NASA shuttle mission taking off...  (Update and clarification - the quoted text is what I wrote myself that day on a scrap of paper, so I am quoting myself.)

"Nobody dares to think big anymore, to dream about the future of mankind.  There is no more manned space exploration, no more belief in world peace and prosperity.

Instead we hunker down, focus on our families and homes, and we distrust politicians, government, and the future.  We can pickles, grow vegetables, save money, are happy to have any kind of job at all, and become more and more disillusioned with how the world works.

We mentally run away from the scary reality of joblessness, climate and weather disasters, the latest reports of food-borne illnesses or worldly disasters by focusing on the small and the personal - update Facebook, take a photo and post it on Flickr, and write about our kids on our blogs.  Or follow 'reality' shows on TV as entertainment, shows that are as far removed from reality as you can get.  

You want a reality show?  Follow a newly graduated PhD trying to get a job.  Or a person trying to communicate with a mortgage broker or customer service rep from GE. Or survive a several day blackout during an ice storm in New Jersey, without electricity, internet, or cell phones.  Most people would despair.   

People use their iphones and other smart internet-connected toys as teddy bears and security blankets to feel relevant, safe and comfortable, but this is so far from the real truth as you can get. This need for false connectedness is like a drug that make you waste your time and not be part of the real reality.

People are desperate, disillusioned, depressed, degraded and (sometimes) deranged. Nobody, except the fools and the overoptimistic, believes that the future is better than now.  And now is not really good in the world."

So, what do we do about this?  How do we make the world a better place?  I hear people all the time say: "There is nothing we can do", "The politicians will never change anything".   But we have to do something or we are just giving up, right?  But what?  The first step is to recognize problems and then to talk about them and then do something about them.  But do what?  I don't know.  I live in a country where the common sense doesn't seem welcome among politicians anymore.

Note - the text above are about general people, not about any particular persons or families.   I am describing the realities I see, not criticizing anybody for feeling a certain way. Believe me, I understand the despairs. But maybe our motto should be "Get real" or "Be real".  That would be a good thing.

New Swedish money

Sweden is changing its kronor (kr) bills in a few years and no, it won't be to euros, but to newly designed bills. To find out what the Swedes wanted, the National Bank of Sweden arranged a way for the public to vote on their favorite Swedes. Today they announced the winners of who will be on the new bills.  No more kings on our bills! These are the winners (final designs to be developed soon):

20 kr: författarinnan Astrid Lindgren och naturmotiv från Småland. (The author Astrid Lindgren [Emil, Ronia, Pippi Longstocking, etc.] with nature scenes from Småland where she was from and wrote about. She got the most votes from the public, we love her!)

50 kr: sångaren Evert Taube och naturmotiv från Bohuslän (The singer, poet, author and songwriter Evert Taube and nature from the west coast province of Bohuslän, a place depicted in many of this songs.)

100 kr: skådespelerskan Greta Garbo och naturmotiv från Stockholm. (The moviestar Greta Garbo and scenes from Stockholm.)

200 kr: regissören Ingmar Bergman och naturmotiv från Gotland. (The movie director Ingmar Bergman and nature from Gotland, the big island in the Baltic Sea where he lived the last part of his life.)

500 kr: sångerskan Birgit Nilsson och naturmotiv från Skåne. (The opera singer Birgit Nilsson and nature scenes from Skåne, the southernmost province.)

1 000 kr: diplomaten Dag Hammarskjöld och naturmotiv från Lappland. (The WWII diplomat and UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld and scenes from Lapland, the northernmost province.)

I think this is amazing and wonderful.  First, there are 3 women and 3 men, none are royalty or nobelmen (well, Hammarskjöld was by ancestry...), all are part of the current Swedish heritage and culture, and they will include nature elements from all parts of Sweden, showing the strong connection Swedes have with nature, landscape and wild places. And, how is this for wonderful logic - Astrid Lindgren will be on the smallest bill because that one is the one kids will see the most!  I love it.

The National Bank said that they 'didn't include any currently living people because nobody should be able to pay with themselves'. Ha! True, and funny.  The coins will change too, except for the 10 kr coin. If you can read Swedish, the whole report from the National Bank is here, 5 pages, in easy to read Swedish with clear nice formatting, just like government reports should be but rarely are, except in Sweden.

I wish more governments in the world did more reasonable and democratic things like this.

What will come after Americanism?

There is a really interesting opinion article in the latest issue of Newsweek by Fareed Zakaria titled "The Post-American World". I haven't read all of it yet, but I wanted to share some with you. It is about the changing world and how USA are no longer the superpower it used to be. He addresses the increased importance not only of China's economy but many other developing countries, the increased peacefulness of the world (even if we don't feel it), the anxiety of Americans, and how islamic militants are becoming less popular in muslim societies. USA is no longer the center of the universe, and I think this is a good thing. This connectivity among people and cultures that we can see developing creates instant and unexpected connections across borders and minds, and I think Obama's success is also part of this. The new web-based world works different than the old media and economies, and it will take time in some countries to adapt to it. Old stiff, self-important politicians from years past will especially be left behind (bye, Hillary Clinton). Here are some excerpts, and you can read the rest by following the link above.

"We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century. It produced the world as we know it now—science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It also led to the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the Western world. The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the 19th century, was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the most powerful nation in the world, stronger than any likely combination of other nations. For the last 20 years, America's superpower status in every realm has been largely unchallenged—something that's never happened before in history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago. During this Pax Americana, the global economy has accelerated dramatically. And that expansion is the driver behind the third great power shift of the modern age—the rise of the rest.

At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension—industrial, financial, social, cultural—the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now—one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples."

"Why do we think we live in scary times? Part of the problem is that as violence has been ebbing, information has been exploding. The last 20 years have produced an information revolution that brings us news and, most crucially, images from around the world all the time. The immediacy of the images and the intensity of the 24-hour news cycle combine to produce constant hype. Every weather disturbance is the "storm of the decade." Every bomb that explodes is BREAKING NEWS."

Insightful!

Book review: After the Gold Rush

I got this book for my brother, O.K., using the free trading website BookMooch, and when it arrived I started reading it. It took about a month maybe, but I love this book. Simply put it is about a Brit, John Stuart Clark, that decides to bike across the USA following the old route of the people that went to California in 1849's gold rush. The name of the book is After the Gold Rush, and it is published by Five Leaves in Britain. As of today there were no reviews of this book at the US Amazon.com website, and only three at the British one.

But this is a book that is wonderful find. The writing is intense, detailed, and insightful and portrays the American landscape and people in an honest and sometimes funny or depressing way. It is a refreshing book, and a book that mixes 1800s history with today's problems of interstate highways, lack of historical knowledge, patriotism, agriculture and lack thereof, unemployment, and the great feeling of biking far. He portrays and quotes people he meets in a very humane and sensitive way, even when others might have just called them white trash or losers. It shows both what is great and not so great with this country. I just really, really like this book. I have decided to keep it (sorry O.K.), but if anyone in my family want to read it, I will lend it to you. The author is also known as Brick, a famous cartoonist.

Here are some excerpts so you get a feeling for the book.

"Sam blamed the interstates for distorting the public's view of the countryside. In batting between cities on smooth blacktops with iron out contours, modern day motorists had lost the interaction they once had with the landscape and the small farming communities they old highways linked." [Clark was not only fighting with large trucks on the roads, but also piss bottles, mud, bridges where bikes were not allowed, non-existing trails, washed out trails, floods, and exloded tires.]

"With an almighty crack, the ground jolted and the heavens opened. A second shaft of lightning struck the earth and shook it, lighting up the tent for a split second in which I saw my glasses case leap in the air like a genetically modified jumping bean. " [Somewhere out on the Midwest, in the worst tornado season.]

"The sun was a bent thumb from the horizon set in a clear blue sky, and the landscape sparkled under heavy frost. Having been destroyed int he storm, millions of spider's webs were being restrung between bushes thick with time. I pissed on my bike to defrost the brakes and I struck out across the moribound plateau of the Green River Basin." [Crossing the Rocky Mountains at South Pass.]

"Beyond the ridge, Promontory Hollow opened out and I found myself back in sagebrush country with a grit railbed running beside me. Another, louder toot echoed around the hollow, though there was nothing man-made in the landscape save barbed wire and tarmac. The road took a left, flowed over gentle undulations, then crossed a couple of rail lines. A magnificent steam locomotive emerged from a shunting shed hidden in the foothills and moved towards the Golden Spike Visitor Center, where a second immaculate engine waited. [...] Finding them stuck in the middle of nowhere on an isolated couple of miles of track emphasised the extraordinary nature of America's great endeavour." [ link to the park, in Utah]

I learned a lot from this book, and not just how hard it is to bike across the salt flats of Utah and Nevada, but about the history of the conquest of the American land, the conservation and formation of National Parks and John Muir's work, and the fate of most of the gold diggers, which never struck it rich. There are also little details that leave a mark, such as San Francisco had no companies that did laundry, so laundry was sent to Hong Kong to be washed in the 1850s. I really recommend this book to anyone that likes biking, travel, history, or politics. It is the perfect mix of a personal and public documentary.

I read this book while I was waiting for my citizenship interview for 3.5 hours at the Department of Homeland Security's office in Newark. I wonder what they would have thought if they knew what I read.

ipod or President?

People deserve the govt they get

The Aliens Are Here!

Most of the time when you think about aliens your brain screams 'War of the Worlds! AAAAA!', but people who actually believe in extra terrestrials (ET's, UFO's, whatever the heck you want to call them) their brain gets exited and says 'Quantum jump in humanity! Yay!' or 'Non-polluting energy source! Yay!'.
Over 70% of all amercians believe that there is a government cover-up.......and they would be right. That's right, I said it. No I am not insane. Yes, I'm quite sure. The government wants to leave the public in the dark when it comes to the fact that there is really faster-than-light moving, soundless, massive objects that are flying in earth's atmosphere. Take a look at
http://www.theblackvault.com/ and you will know what I mean. It contains thousands of down loadable reports of 'Unauthorized flying in a restricted area' where, coincidentally, that object is going twice the speed of sound and is defying gravity.
But why? I mean, why us, out of probable billions of other life-forms? Two words: Nuclear Weapons. Ever since we discovered that by using decaying plutonium and uranium we would be able to create the most power full weapons in the world, the Aliens have screamed 'Oh my god! The kids have the matches!' In short, they are trying to keep us from destroying ourselves. But why not just land in Washington DC with thousands of antimatter laser cannons equipped to ships, and demand the cease of nuclear weapons? 1: It could cause intergalactic war. 2: They don't want to directly approach us for fear that either us or their fate might match that of the fabled do-do bird.
So, in total, anyone who denies the fact that Aliens have visited our planet (Whether you are a FBI agent or a common civilian), you will miss out. ALOT.