Flamping

Flamping in Wisconsin (WSJ photo)

By now most people are familiar with the term glamping (glamorous, i.e., luxurious camping), and now there's flamping:

Meet plane campers. They incorporate an obsession for aviation into their rustic getaways, and pitch tents beneath the wings of their small aircraft.

“There’s something about camping with your airplane that’s different from camping with your car,” explains Roger Roberts, a cardiologist.

Fans flock to the Sun ’n Fun Aerospace Expo in Lakeland, Fla., or to smaller airports that offer that unique blend of flying in and camping out—call it flamping.

The epicenter of this pastime is at Wittman Regional Airport here in Wisconsin each summer. Plane campers park in neat rows that stretch as far as the eye can see. Wet clothes and towels hanging from propellers flap in the breeze.

This isn’t your typical commune with nature. The Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture Oshkosh, sometimes compared with Woodstock, routinely draws more than 10,000 planes to Oshkosh and surrounding small airports.

Flamping is squarely a middle class activity. Used Cessnas are in the $200,000 range, well within the reach of retirees with a decent nest egg and a paid-up house.

Flamping, or even glamping, is not something that this traveler is inclined to do, however. Preferring to maximize the enjoyment at each destination, I don't want to be burdened by hauling around too much stuff, much less setting it up and taking it down. Nevertheless....is this a great country or what?

Taking a Break from Work

Happy Labor Day!

ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith almost can't believe what he's hearing about someone's work ethic.

https://t.co/V3brHELkWd pic.twitter.com/qWjs8PG9Gm

— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) August 31, 2024

Worth A Deeper Look

During the homily the lady minister quoted Madeleine D'Engle:

“We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

I read Wrinkle in Time in sixth grade, focusing on the science fiction aspects of the novel; the good-vs-evil religious allusions escaped me, like much of what was going on in the Sixties.

Madeleine D'Engle sounds like "my kind" of Christian, i.e., the kind that minimizes preachiness and leads by example. She's worth a deeper look.

But I'm Not Going to Correct Them

I think this is me.

Man Unsure If He’s Becoming More Virtuous With Age Or Just Too Tired To Sin https://t.co/shJFS7afwZ pic.twitter.com/uVwxHUDMEK

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 31, 2024

Freeze Your Credit Now

(Image from Dealing with Dementia)

In early 2015 I read about how freezing one's credit can provide protection against one consequence of identification theft: a crook being able to open a new loan, credit card, or line of credit in my name.

I paid $10 to each of the three major credit-reporting agencies, Experian, Transunion, and Equifax, not to furnish credit reports to new lenders who come asking. It has been a minor hassle to unfreeze the accounts to obtain car leases and a new Apple Card, but it's been worth the $10 charge to sleep a little easier every night.

Credit freezes have cost nothing since 2018, so everyone should do it.

The good news is that freezing your credit is less of a pain than it used to be. It became free and simpler under a 2018 federal law following the massive Equifax breach the year before. But it does take a little more effort than locking your door...

Aside from making it a little less convenient to apply for a loan or credit card, freezing your credit costs nothing and has virtually no downside. It doesn’t hurt your credit score. Landlords and employers can still run a credit check. Existing creditors can increase your credit limit.

Making it harder to open new lines of credit might also be a form of financial discipline, since you won’t be able to sign up for buy now, pay later offers or store credit cards without first unfreezing your credit...

To freeze your credit, you must go online and request a freeze at all three of the major credit bureaus: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. Reversing the process requires going through each bureau again.

To prove who you are, you will need to have a government ID, like a driver’s license, pay stubs and utility bills. Once set, it should take less than a half-hour to complete the process, says Miklos Ringbauer, a financial adviser in California. He encourages clients to keep their credit frozen and only lift the freeze for short periods, such as when they plan to apply for loans. After the initial setup, the freeze can be turned on or off with a few clicks, he said.

Freezing credit doesn't relieve one of the need to review one's existing bank, credit-card, stock-brokerage, retirement, etc. accounts for unfamiliar transactions, but it's a necessary part of a scam-protection program.

Out of Rhythm

Lester Beach, South Lake Tahoe (Chron)

Moderate weather is forecast for this Labor Day:

Tranquil weather is expected in the Bay Area for the holiday weekend as west-southwest winds keep marine air flowing from the ocean to the land, preventing temperatures from climbing too high. Sunday will be the windiest day of the extended weekend, with gusts up to 30 mph.

Along the coast, the ebb and flow to the marine layer will keep temperatures in San Francisco in the 60s to low 70s with morning and evening clouds from Friday through Monday. Oakland should reach the mid-70s each day, while San Jose will steadily be in the low to mid-80s.

It looks like a good weekend to get away.

During my working years I looked forward to holiday weekends. Dates were circled months in advance, and travel was scheduled to minimize the use of paid vacation. Holiday weekends took a lot of work, but the payoff was often great.

Now that I'm retired I don't much care for long weekends. Shopping centers, restaurants, and supermarkets are crowded on what would normally be a weekday, and the local bank and post office are closed. I rarely go on long car trips, especially not when most other people are on the road like the upcoming Labor Day weekend.

I do regret being out of rhythm with the rest of America.

Stanford's Creative Writing Contretemps

Part of the School of Humanities and Sciences (CEO World)

IMHO, it didn't look like "-isms" (for once) had anything to do with this decision, but after award-winning writer Joyce Carol Oates hinted that sexism was a factor, a "national backlash" resulted.

Stanford creative writing layoff ‘scandal’ ignites backlash among authors and students

Stanford University’s announcement that 23 creative writing instructors will be pushed out of their jobs and replaced has set off a national backlash in the literary community and among students in the program.

“Why would senior faculty vote to fire their colleagues who are doing so much of the work of teaching?” celebrated author Joyce Carol Oates posted on social media, raising questions about whether Stanford’s decision was meant to save money or was inspired by rank sexism.

“I am puzzled most by the lack of simple collegiality & generosity at one of the most wealthy universities in the world,” Oates wrote. “Stanford’s endowment could support an entire nation. Yet, much-admired (writing instructors) were fired after having requested modest raises which would have brought their salaries to levels far below senior faculty.”

Also, she noted, “only male senior professors voted to fire.”

Background from the Chronicle article: Pulitzer-prize winning author Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) founded Stanford's creative writing program in 1946. At the same time Texas oilman E.H. Jones, brother of Stanford English professor Richard Foster Jones, established both the Stegner Fellowships and Jones Lectureships.

The Fellowships were monetary grants for the students and the Lectureships funded short-term teaching appointments that the Stegner fellows could apply for. Over time the short-term appointments morphed into long-term positions.

A Stanford working group

decided to restore the intent of the Jones lectureship and give new Stegner Fellows “the opportunity to apply to be Jones Lecturers once they have completed their fellowships,” [Dean of School of Humanities and Sciences Debra] Satz said in her letter...

The new appointments will be one year “with the possibility of renewal for up to four more years.”

Undoubtedly there are some excellent instructors who have been let go, but I applaud Stanford for forcing new blood into the lectureships, but more importantly "restor[ing] the intent of the Jones lectureship." Too often we have seen donors' wishes being disregarded, and it's a sign to future donors that Stanford will abide by their instructions as best it can.

SF Public Art: the Latest Chapter in the Culture War

Piss Christ

Lefties used to laugh at the bluenoses who wanted to put fig leaves on nude statues.

They mocked the negative reaction by many Christians to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ (1987), a crucifix submerged in a jar of the artist's urine. A work of art should provoke feelings in the observer, they said, your personal morality limits you.

Four decades later Progressives turned a blind eye to the toppling of historical public works that reflected "power, privilege, white supremacy, patriarchy and colonialism." The destruction accelerated during the George Floyd riots of 2020.

The city had its share of monuments destroyed in 2020 when bronze statues of Junipero Serra, Ulysses S. Grant and Francis Scott Key were all knocked off their pedestals by protesters in Golden Gate Park. The city removed the statue of Christopher Columbus at Coit Tower to avoid a similar fate. All four statues are now secured in storage.

2018: SF removed an "Early Days" statue depicting
a white missionary towering over a supine Indian.

Now San Francisco will spend $3 million from a Mellon grant to determine which works are acceptable and which are offensive.

San Francisco is about to embark on evaluating its nearly 100 statues and monuments to figure out which ones no longer represent the city’s values and should be removed from view, relocated or re-interpreted with explanatory plaques.

The debate over the city’s monuments began in 2018 with the removal of the “Early Days” sculpture from the Pioneer Monument in the Civic Center because it represented a Native American seated before a Spanish Catholic missionary. The effort gathered steam amid the racial-justice movement in 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd. That year, crowds toppled statues throughout the country that glorified Confederate Civil War leaders, which critics said paid homage to the country’s racist past.

The survey of San Francisco’s civic art collection — funded by a $3 million Mellon Foundation grant — will be conducted by an outside firm and should be completed by January.

The project, called “Shaping Legacy,” was discussed at an Arts Commission meeting last week when senior project manager Angela Carrier explained that looking at San Francisco’s monuments and memorials as a whole shows “a concentration that talks about power, privilege, white supremacy, patriarchy, and colonialism.”

“These monuments no longer represent the values that we say the city stands for,” she added.

IMHO, this is a self-defeating move by Progressives. Keeping the "bad" monuments up would be a constant reminder of San Francisco's white supremacist past and prove that this claim has validity.

Another observation, updated now that Progressives control big cities, media, and the elite colleges: art, like free speech, can still provoke, as long as it doesn't go against the Progressive narrative.

We'll end this post with a quote include in the article from Stanford History professor James T. Campbell:

"To me, the real danger of these kind of exercises is not so much historical erasure as self-congratulation, with all of us pointing accusatory fingers at our benighted forbears and patting ourselves on the back for our own superior moral wisdom,” he said. “It’s worth asking what San Franciscans a hundred years from now might say when they audit us."

I Refer to Myself

as "your humble blogger" for a reason.

When I bought the prepared ramen at Nijiya Market I dumped the contents in a large bowl and heated it for three minutes per the instructions (I assumed that the soup was in gelatinous form).

Upon stirring the noodles, vegetables, and pork, I discovered the hot soup was in a plastic bag which should have been cut open and emptied before microwaving.

The next time I bought the ramen there was a new warning sign, "Please remove soup bag first and pour into the bowl." The ramen company must have heard from other customers to add the warning.

It is comforting that I wasn't alone in my stupidity.

The Cowboy Wok

Yet another cooking appliance that's catching fire:

There is a new cooking fixture at backyard barbecues, hiking trips and tailgates across America: the cowboy wok.

Also known as a discada or simply a disco, this sizable metal disc is a versatile cooking pan designed for use over an open fire, propane burner or grill. Similar to paella, the term discada refers to the specialized pan and the dish commonly prepared in it.

Initially fashioning them from farm plow discs, cowboys and ranchers long embraced them to prepare hearty meals over the campfire. The cookware subsequently became a mainstay in Northern Mexico and the Southwestern U.S. for generations.

They're bigger than an Asian wok and much heavier. One aficionado uses one that weighs 65 pounds. Were I a hunter who likes to cook his game over an open flame the discada would be an essential part of my toolkit. But I'm not the target market, and my woks will do just fine.

The Bleakness of 1942 Wasn't So Bad

Writer Bob Greene came across a real-life reconstruction of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks on the streets of New York.

But what was this strange tableau doing on New York’s streets on a radiant midsummer afternoon? Before me stood a stage-set-like replica of the diner, its front wall and window frame constructed of wood but with no glass pane, its counter a life-size version of Hopper’s brushstroke image right down to the stools, the twin metal coffee urns, and an actor dressed in white like the counterman in the painting, poised to serve some java.

I quickly learned that this was part of a four-day off-site exhibit by the Whitney Museum of American Art to honor Hopper’s work. People lined up waiting for their chance to sit on the stools and pose as though they were part of the painting while their friends took photos of them through the make-believe window with the “Only 5¢, Phillies, America’s No. 1 Cigar” sign above it.

Edward Hopper, Nighthawks (1942), Art Institute of Chicago

Although I was familiar with the painting, it was many years after my last art-appreciation course that I began to understand why the work strikes such a chord. Bob Greene explains:

A diner late at night, with few customers and a sole employee putting in his hours, embodies a quiet drama all its own, which is what makes Hopper’s painting pack its lasting power. The dialogue—or lack of it—within the four walls is left to the imagination, rendering it somehow more profound than anything a soundtrack might reveal...

In the 1942 painting, the world outside the diner might as well not have existed. The emptiness on Hopper’s streets emphasized the closed universe within the establishment’s walls.

The characters reek of the loneliness in the urban environment (the artist said that a restaurant in Greenwich Village was its inspiration), but I would take that bleakness today, where there are no all-night diners in the big city, let alone ones with huge plate-glass windows.

Books Discarded Wistfully

I'm going through some of the books in my not-completed pile and have had to face an uncomfortable truth: if I live to a hundred I'll never finish some of them because, frankly, I have other things I'd rather do.

Nevertheless, guilty feelings remained until book reviewer Maya Chung gave permission to (h/t Ann Althouse), Go Ahead, Put Down That Book [bold added]

This week, Sophie Vershbow asked English teachers, librarians, writers, and readers when it’s okay not to finish a book. My answer to that question is: almost always, unless you’re writing a review of it; in that case, please read it from cover to cover. You might think that, as a book-review editor, I’d have a completist attitude toward reading. In reality, I tend to drop books early and often...

I often find that I can prematurely part ways without angst even with a volume I’m thoroughly enjoying; I know that if I’m meant to finish it, I’ll find my way back eventually. Of course, if I want to recommend a book widely or rave about it on the internet, I need to complete it, in case the story takes an unexpected turn or something happens in the last few pages that changes my perspective. The same rule applies if I feel like hating. “Not finishing a story weakens your ability to properly assess it,” Vershbow advises. “It’s fine to abandon a title, but if you do, keep the strong opinions to a minimum.”

Not long ago, one of my colleagues told me about a rule her friend’s mother’s book club follows, and I’ve been sharing it with friends when they admit that they’re struggling through this or that beloved title: Subtract your age from 100, and you’ll end up with the number of pages you need to read before dropping a book. Only 20 years old? You’ll need to read 80 pages before you can move on. But if you’re 90, you need to read only 10. By that age, you’ve earned the right not to spend a second of your time on something that doesn’t bring you joy.

In a couple of weeks the church is having a parking-lot sale, and I'm donating some of my uncompleted books (pictured). I'll discard them wistfully, much as I gaze on foods that I no longer eat. I'll follow Ms. Chung's "100 minus" rule, however, and read at least 29 pages--I have already done so with many of them--before putting them in the box.

Stonestown Galleria: Foodie Paradise

Our lunch at Marugame Udon

For the past decade, even during the COVID lockdown, we've stopped at Stonestown Galleria whenever passing through San Francisco because of the food. From 2019:

In recent years, the 66-year-old mall in the Outer Avenues has quickly and quietly become a top culinary destination in San Francisco, thanks to a flood of new restaurants that have brought crowds ready to line up for freshly made noodles, fruity boba tea and, most recently, Japanese souffle pancakes.

In 2024 Stonestown is adding more restaurants:

The San Francisco mall already considered by some to be a foodie paradise is about to get another infusion of trendy eateries. Three new restaurants are opening at Stonestown Galleria in the next year...

Le Soleil, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Inner Richmond, is expected to open a second SF location at the mall by the end of the year. The restaurant, which serves dishes such as bo luc lac (shaking beef) and imperial rolls with pork and vegetables, also has a Hong Kong location. Le Soleil will take over the former Banana Republic space, reported KRON-TV.

Supreme Dumplings, a Seattle area restaurant known for its soup dumplings, is expected to open at Stonestown by the end of 2024 or early 2025. With two existing restaurants in Bellevue and Kirkland, Washington, this will be Supreme Dumplings’ first California restaurant. The restaurant will be in the former LensCrafters space on the second floor of the mall, according to KRON.

Kizuki Ramen & Izakaya, a Japanese chain with over a dozen U.S. locations, is also slated to open at Stonestown in the first quarter of 2025. The bulk of its American restaurants are located in the Seattle area, with this one being its first in California. According to KRON4, it will replace the popular souffle pancake spot Gram Cafe, which is closing after Aug. 27.

Within the past few years, Stonestown has become a food hub, bringing in popular international Asian restaurant chains such as Marugame Udon and Kura Revolving Sushi Ba

We have more restaurants to try, so Stonestown will continue to be a place for us to stop.

About Elon Musk: Another Reason You Should Read Beyond the Headlines

The 2.800 sq. ft. home was the property of Gene Wilder. Elon Musk sold it to Wilder's nephew.

Elon Musk forecloses on homeowner is a headline that seems to confirm the worst suspicions about a billionaire and his greed; that is, until one digs into the story and the homeowner sings his praises (!). [bold added]

In 2020, tech mogul Elon Musk agreed to sell one of his Los Angeles homes to filmmaker Jordan Walker-Pearlman and his wife, Elizabeth Hunter, for $7 million. Walker-Pearlman had grown up in the Bel-Air house—the longtime home of his uncle, the late “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” actor Gene Wilder—and Musk agreed to loan the couple most of the money they would need to buy it.

“He could have sold it for so much more,” Walker-Pearlman, a film director and writer, told The Wall Street Journal in 2022. “His sensitivity to me can’t be overstated.”

The facts, as noted in the article:

2013 - Elon Musk buys the late Gene Wilder's home for $6.75 million.

2020 - Musk lists the home for $9.5 million but sells it to Jordan Walker-Pearlman for $7 million and provides him with a $6.7 million loan, a much higher advance than any bank would allow.

2024 - The Musk loan managers file a notice of default after Walker-Pearlman fell behind the loan payments. Walker-Pearlman lists the home for $12.95 million ("Musk’s representatives have made it clear that they have no intention of forcing a sale").

Normally a foreclosure is bad news for the homeowner, but look at the overall picture. Jordan Walker-Pearlman and his wife, Elizabeth Hunter put $300,000 down, lived for four years in a house they never could have afforded were it not for a billionaire's generosity, then stand to receive $5.25 million ($12,950,000-6,700,000 mortgage-1,000,000 selling expense plug estimate) on the sale.

That's a $4.950,000 profit, 16.5 times their down payment, a 1,650% return on investment. On a yearly basis, that's 105% per annum over four years [$300,000 x (1+1.05)^4].

Elon Musk has given away multi-million-dollar profits to someone he probably never knew four years ago. Are billionaires greedy? Sometimes, but not always.

Note to Kamala Harris' speechwriters: that's how one does a "return on investment" calculation. It would be nice if you show your work, but I'm not holding my breath.

Kamala Harris: the Play within the Play?

Jean Hagen and Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain

My favorite musical is Singin' in the Rain, largely because of its famous song-and-dance numbers. The simple romantic plot occurs against the backdrop of the transition from silent to talking pictures, and the cartoonish villain is Jean Hagen's Lina Lamont, who forces ingenue Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) to dub over Lina's high-pitched screech so that Lina can keep her leading-lady status.

Amherst professor Hadley Arkes likens Kamala Harris to Lina Lamont: [bold added]

Movie buffs often look for a film that catches the political moment. Before Joe Biden dropped out, it might have been “The Last Hurrah” (1958). Now it’s “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), a picture about the emergence of the “talkies” in the mid-1920s, when sound was added to films.

The shock came when glamorous figures suddenly had to speak and, in some cases, their voices and accents made the audience cringe. The captivating siren, threatened with exposure in “Singin’ in the Rain,” is the invincible, unteachable Lina Lamont. In the movie, Lina is played by the veteran Jean Hagen, but the turnabout comes in our own politics, where she is played by Kamala Harris.

Or rather, Ms. Harris is now our Lina Lamont, who must be carefully guarded by her handlers and barred from speaking, for her own good (and that of the Democratic Party). That her managers have kept her shielded and confined to scripted performances confirms their own judgment that she simply isn’t up to it.

In “Singin’ in the Rain,” Lina’s songs are dubbed while she lip-synchs. Ms. Harris can make the sounds; the point of resemblance is that the words aren’t hers. So it was, one might say, for all presidents between Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama. Calvin Coolidge used to plead that he had to decline so many invitations to speak because he didn’t have the time to do the research. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speechwriter Sam Rosenman knew the style and sensibility of the patrician figure for whom he was trying to write. With Ms. Harris, there is no fixed persona or style, confirmed in writing and speech. She is something for her writers to invent.

In real life Jean Hagen was an excellent actress who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Singin'.

It would be an ironic life-imitates-art twist against Prof. Harkes' thesis if Kamala Harris were a Jean Hagen who performs well in unscripted moments, and that her "drunken Kamala" and "word salad Kamala" videos were all her being captured in a weak moment or even an act (is she really that Machievallian?).