No, I Didn't Need to See It

Tilden Park, Berkeley (Mercury News photo)

Getting out of town during the freeze, I got the timing right.

While the Bay Area experienced "its most famous snow day in close to 50 years" I was chilling in the 70°F weather in Honolulu. And no, I didn't need to see the snow.

Your humble former college student lived through his first snowfall in Connecticut. It was new and exciting for about a week.

Then I slipped on an icy sidewalk and landed ignominiously on a body part that fortunately had a lot of padding. After those college winters I've spent over 99% of my non-business life in California and Hawaii, as God intended.

California needs the water, so I'm glad rain and snow are pummeling the Bay Area...while I'm gone.

Coming This Way Again

The thick clouds mixed with blue skies this morning portended short squalls, and sure enough, I was soaked several times in the morning and afternoon.

The tee shirt and shorts dried quickly in the warmth, and unless I needed to be presentable for work or a date (phenomena in the distant past for your humble blogger), it wasn't necessary to go home to change.

Besides, I didn't want to spend my trip doing laundry every day.

At the International Market Place tourists took pictures in front of the "Aloha" sign.

It looked pretty cool on the wooden floor, yet had a smidgeon of tackiness because of the ubiquity of "Aloha."

I took a picture anyway. One can never be sure about coming this way again.

If You're Going to Zoom, You May as Well Zoom from Someplace Warm

With St. Ambrose looking over his shoulder,
the rector reviewed the state of the congregation.

Taking a break from the Hawaiian vacation, I tuned in to the livestream worship service back home in the Bay Area.

Today was the new Rector's first Annual Meeting, and he already made one significant change by holding it in the middle, not the end of, the service.

IMHO, the new format was much more efficient. In previous years lunch accompanied the meeting and there was more socializing. Today conversation, including an open questions and answers section, was all business.

The new regime raised my committee's budget without my asking, and it's only coincidental that I like the way things are going so far.

All the Time in the World

Market City is one of the larger neighborhood shopping centers on Oahu. A mile from the family home, it's your humble blogger's regular destination for supermarket shopping and picking up dinner.

The restaurants are busy, but rarely do the lines go out the door and never do they stretch 50 feet. The lady at the Korean barbecue said the new Kamitoku Hot Pot restaurant was charging $5 for a $15 meal. It was a "soft opening" pre-celebration of the "grand opening" in March.

Yelp reviewers already have cautioned that the wait for a table could be well over an hour. That didn't seem to deter the young-ish crowd that was happily chatting away, texting, and taking pictures.

I ordered take-out, bought a few items at Foodland, and returned to the car. After 30 minutes the line had barely moved. When you're young, you have all the time in the world.

Headline Unique to Hawaii

Headlines can be alarming, but sometimes one just has to read the story (illegal sandbags?) out of curiosity. [bold added]

State officials are once again trying to crack down on the dozens of sandbag barriers, known as burritos, that have come to litter Hawaii’s beaches. This time they are pushing legislation that would require beachfront property owners who have installed the structures illegally or under temporary permits to disclose the structures and any fines or enforcement actions they may be facing to prospective buyers when they seek to sell their homes...

State laws largely forbid private-property owners from erecting shoreline hardening structures, which have caused beach loss throughout the state. As waves push up against the barriers that protect private homes and businesses, they claw away at the sand and prevent beaches from being re-nourished.

But property owners have found various ways to exploit loopholes in state and county laws over the years to harden the shorelines in front of their homes, including installing burritos and mounds of sandbags under temporary emergency permits and then not removing them once they expire.

The burritos, which typically cost tens of thousands of dollars, include long, heavy sandbags, which are often attached to black tarps.

North Shore homes with black tarp (msn photo)

Beach erosion is a serious issue, and given the exorbitant price of land in Hawaii, it's understandable why homeowners want to protect their property. However, it looks like the environmentalists once again have the upper hand in the legislature, and homeowners' net worth will be washed away.

Note: students of newswriting will note that it's obvious where the reporter stands. "Prevent beaches from being re-nourished" could easily be rephrased "slow property erosion" or even "prevent beaches from being replenished with sand". "Re-nourished": another bow to Mother Gaia.

Leave the Parka, Take the Slippers

The low temperature is expected to be 37°F tomorrow morning in Foster City.

It's a good time to leave for the Islands to tend to financial matters and family obligations.

I think I'm really going to enjoy this trip to my home town.

Honolulans have told me to dress warmly because the temperatures have fallen to 68°F.

Noted, but I'll still leave the parka in California.

Making Nice in Palo Alto

(Mercury News photo)

It's not as noteworthy as the lion lying down with the lamb, but the most prominent businessman and one of the most prominent politicians in the U.S. made nice today:

Tesla has decided to base its engineering headquarters in Palo Alto at a former Hewlett-Packard site, the company’s top boss Elon Musk announced on Wednesday.

Musk made the announcement in Palo Alto during an unusual joint appearance with Gov. Gavin Newsom. The pair have sparred in the past over California’s business climate...California and its political establishment...were jolted in 2021 when Tesla decided to decamp its headquarters from the Golden State and move the company’s corporate offices to Texas.

Both men have attracted attention by making public statements that inflame political activists on the left and right. But they didn't get to where they were by passing up opportunities to make a win-win deal.

IMHO, the "real" Gavin Newsom and the "real" Elon Musk are both shrewd, calculating individuals who measure both the short- and long-term consequences of their actions. The next time they issue a provocative tweet that makes you cheer or sputter, that's exactly what they wanted you to do.

Prioritizing Underground Water Storage

Ways of recharging the aquifer (Water Education Fdn)

We've lamented that California has built very little water storage though

State voters have approved eight water bonds since 2000 that authorize some $27 billion in funding for various water projects.

California is now known for being a State that can't get any important project built, whether it be high-speed rail, low-cost housing, or hydroelectric dams.

It's time to prioritize below-ground storage.

Winter storms have filled California’s reservoirs and built up a colossal Sierra snowpack that’s nearly twice its normal size for this time of year. But years of dry conditions have created problems far beneath Earth’s surface that aren’t as easily addressed.

Groundwater — found in underground layers containing sand, soil and rock — is crucial for drinking water and sustaining farms. During drought years, 60% of California’s annual water supply comes from groundwater. This water is not easily replenished, especially as many groundwater basins across the state are critically overdrafted...

Compared with 2004, the amount of water on and below the ground in 2022 has dropped by nearly 55 cubic kilometers.

Recharge site in Selma, CA.

Hydrologist Jay Famiglietti, a professor at Arizona State University, and NASA scientist Pang-Wei Liu used satellite data and surface measurements to determine groundwater depletion. Of the 55 cubic kilometer total diminishment in California's water supply since 2004, approximately 40 cubic kilometers, or 73% came from groundwater.

Time for a little arithmetic. The acre-foot, which is the quantity of a sheet of water one acre in area by one foot deep, is a standard measure of water volume. The average household uses between one-half and one acre-foot per year. There are 810,714 acre-feet in 1 cubic kilometer. The two largest reservoirs in California, Shasta and Oroville, hold 5.6 and 4.3 cubic kilometers of water, respectively.

To create additional above-ground reservoirs the equivalent of Shasta and Oroville would cost many billions of dollars. If water from the snowpack could be directed to underground storage and then withdrawn when needed (we know that California has already taken out 40 cubic kilometers net), that method would be much more cost effective then building dams. Without human intervention six to nine wet years in a row would be required to replenish the aquifer.

Farmers, hydrologists, and agronomists realized one century ago that underground wells could fill faster if the land were managed to absorb flood waters. Today much more is known about Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR), but little has been done since we last wrote about this subject seven years ago.

It makes sense to build more recharge stations on land that's already equipped for them. The financial, environmental, and regulatory obstacles are much less than other water-storage alternatives. If Californians blow it again, we are truly an undeserving people.

Shaking Your Booty from the Inside

Constipation has to be really, really bad before I resort to this:

patients swallow a capsule that vibrates to stimulate the intestines.

The capsule, called Vibrant, was cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration in August and this week became available for doctors.

In the intestines, the vibrations are intended to stimulate specialized nerve cells called mechanosensory cells, which in turn trigger undulating muscle contractions that help squeeze food through the gut.

Suppose the capsule "trigger(s) undulating muscle contractions" that won't stop? Suppose it gets stuck inside and won't come out when it's supposed to? Suppose TSA, which stopped me for a single Kleenex in a shirt pocket, won't let me through until the capsule is removed?

Thanks, but I'll stick with eating enough oatmeal to produce the desired effect.

Aunt Eva (1932 - 2023)

Aunt Eva, Uncle Mel, and Debbie

Aunt Eva, the last of my father's eight siblings, passed away last night.

Eva was always busy working, going to church, and raising her family.

She checked on her brothers and their offspring when we were kids and continued to do so long after she retired. She managed her older sister's estate after the latter's son predeceased his mother.

Thank you, Auntie, for being the glue that held our sprawling family together. R.I.P.

Language Pushback

We're accustomed to hearing accusations of racism, class-ism, and sexism thrown about in any discussion of housing; what's unusual is that this time there was pushback:

Kylie Clark (LinkedIn photo)

Los Gatos Town Council censured a planning commissioner for using “divisive language” in a letter to the state, in which she said “rich, white, anti-housing men” organized the referendum on the town’s plan for future growth.

Council voted unanimously Feb. 15 to censure Commissioner Kylie Clark, an action that serves as a formal disapproval of her comments.

The City of Los Gatos is 72% white, and the median house value is $1.8 million, so Ms. Clark may well be factually correct that leaders of the housing referendum were rich, white men.

But by describing them as such to the exclusion of other attributes, she is strongly implying that their decision-making is due to their race, class, and sex and not to other factors, for example, environmental considerations, traffic, and infrastructure.

If she had evidence to support her claim, she should have presented it. In its absence, the Town Council was right to call her on it.

SF Homelessness: A Three-Decade-Long "Emergency"

Yes, it's another meeting on homelessness,
but this time it will be different.

Watching a 1994 episode of Murder She Wrote set in San Francisco, I was struck by the inclusion of a homeless character who played a major role in the solution of a murder. Even back then it was widely known that San Francisco had a homelessness problem.

Three decades and billions of dollars later, fed-up residents want San Francisco to declare a state of emergency:

Frustrated by the crisis of persistent homelessness in San Francisco, a group of residents wants the city to declare a state of emergency to enable a more urgent response to the problem.

The move would be similar to action taken by newly elected Mayor Karen Bass in Los Angeles, who declared a homelessness emergency on her first day in office in December to fast-track moving thousands of people off the streets. It would also mirror Mayor London Breed’s emergency declaration over COVID-19, which cut through red tape and helped major policy changes happen quickly. At last count, nearly 4,400 people were counted living on San Francisco streets in one night.

The residents were mad and motivated, but there were no new ideas that came out of the discussions. Converting existing vacant buildings, prioritizing women and children, and cutting red tape have all been heard before.

Rechristening the problem an emergency might well get a few hundred more people off the streets in relatively little time, but the improvement will be short-term. The most probable outcome is that San Francisco will have spent even more dollars and homelessness will remain as intractable as ever.

Marin County Leads the Way

(Tripadvisor photo)

Marin County became (in)famous as the land of hot tubs and peacock feathers in the 1978 NBC documentary, I Want It All Now. In the eyes of many in the national TV audience that documentary confirmed Marin County as the home of wealthy, non-traditional sybarites.

That stereotype only applied to a small number of residents, and Marin County in any event continued to be one of the Bay Area's most desirable places to live during the next four decades. That is, until last year.

from July 2021 to 2022, Marin lost more of its population than any other county in the Bay Area over the same time period, according to estimates recently released by the California Department of Finance. The county’s population dwindled by about 6,600 people — a loss of 15 residents for every 1,000 people that lived there in 2021...

(Chronicle graph)

One reason why Marin County lost population, experts said, is that its residents haven’t had a lot of kids lately — nor are they likely to.

The county’s median age of 46.9 years is the highest of any Bay Area county, and more than nine years higher than the state overall...

All of these factors — older population, low number of jobs relative to nearby counties and high rate of move-outs — are connected to Marin’s lack of housing, [Public Policy Institute's Hans] Johnson said.

Marin built just 5,862 homes from 2010 to 2021, or 32 units per 1,000 residents as of its 2010 population. That number is by far the smallest of any Bay Area county.

When I Want It All Now was shown in 1978, California was much more diverse, culturally and politically. It was the home state of conservative governor Ronald Reagan, who would be elected President two years later, and Richard Nixon, who served as President from 1968 to 1974. Marin County was at the left end of the country's political spectrum, and Orange County was on the right. California could accommodate everyone.

In retrospect Marin values won. The county was at the vanguard of the Progressive takeover of California, and today not a single Republican holds a California State office; the last elected Republican U.S. Senator was Pete Wilson (1988).

In 2023 Marin may be leading California again, this time on a different path.

while Marin may be an extreme instance of the Bay Area-wide trend in population loss, it’s still an example, rather than an outlier. California, after all, lost nearly 500,000 people in just two years, from mid-2020 to mid-2022

Demographic trends, especially regarding birth and death rates, are difficult to reverse. Marin, the Bay Area, and California haven't hit bottom yet.

Brain Protection: Not Just for Football Players and Construction Workers

Amazon sells this $79 lead cap hood

People who wear tin-foil hats have been mocked for nearly a century, but they weren't crazy, just ahead of their time.

Headline: When Your Boss is Tracking Your Brain

Over the years, these electroencephalogram, or EEG, devices, along with the software and algorithms that power them, have gotten better at tracking brain-wave signals and decoding people’s emotions and cognitive skills. Some employers use the devices to monitor employees’ fatigue and offer brain-wave tracking as part of wellness programs designed to decrease stress and anxiety.

My mental alacrity has diminished significantly from when I was in high school, and I'm glad that I retired before employers' brain-scanning devices could document the degradation.

If I ever do go back to work, I'm wearing a lead hoodie purportedly to hide my balding pate, but you and I will know the real reason, dear reader.

The Pity of The Preening

(Image from Brewminate)

Beginning in 2016 the City of San Francisco prohibited travel to and business with states that disagreed with progressive values. (The restrictions applied to the City and its employees.) The list of banned states that had different laws on LGBTQ, abortion, and/or voting rights has mushroomed to 30, and San Francisco has found itself greatly inconvenienced.

a new city report said the law has been ineffective and cumbersome....The report also found the law adds costs and complexity to city contracting...

“It’s an ineffective policy that complicates the business of San Francisco government and makes it very likely that we pay more than we should for goods and services,” [Supervisor Rafael] Mandelman said in an interview Monday...

Supervisors established the boycott in October 2016 when they approved a law that banned city-funded travel to states that had restricted LGBTQ rights in the wake of the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The law also prevented the city from approving contracts with companies based in the banned states.

In subsequent years, supervisors expanded the boycott to include states that passed laws to limit abortion access and voting rights.

Your humble blogger believes that it is perfectly within the City's right to conduct its affairs according to its own moral code. But the City had another objective--to convert other jurisdictions to San Francisco values by withholding business. Accomplishment of the latter has been nil.

[City Administrator Carmet] Chu’s office said in its Friday report that it could not find any concrete evidence that the states targeted by the boycott had changed their laws because of San Francisco’s actions.

The law “has created additional administrative burden for City staff and vendors and unintended consequences for San Francisco citizens, such as limiting enrichment and developmental opportunities,” Chu’s report said. “Few, if any, other jurisdictions implement travel or contracting bans as expansive as the City’s.”

Lectures and threats rarely convert anyone to a cause, though San Francisco may have had a chance if it was excellent in its governance. However, its widely publicized failures in dealing with crime, homelessness, and drug use, plus the exodus of middle-class families and businesses, have put paid to that notion.

The pity of this preening is that it wasted money, squandered moral capital, and made fellow Americans less inclined to help San Francisco when it needs it, and that day will assuredly come.