Thursday - Thoughts on a road trip with my kid

 My youngest child is 30 years old. Don't worry about how old I am. Some days I feel like I'm older than dirt and others, younger than springtime, or whatever. But Hudson and I haven't spent a lot of time together, meaning several days, since they were in college. That made this trip special all by itself.

Spending seven+ hours in the car together, just the two of us in that bubble turned out to be rather pleasant. The drive up was pretty much uneventful except for a few rain showers along the way, and the route took me along a road I'd never traveled before, through a few towns in Wyoming County and eastern Erie County that were new to me.

Hudson was interested in the route, especially after we got off I-390 and headed west from Mount Morris. Wyoming County is rolling farm country, with corn fields, orchards and dairy pastures. The ridges were often crowned with wind turbines, as electricity generation has become a substantial financial support to the farms. They are neither ugly nor beautiful and add a certain SF atmosphere to the bucolic scene.

Hudson is very political and they paid attention to the American flags, the occasional Trump sign and notable anti-SAFE Act signs - which is an indicator of a 2nd Amendment absolutist since the act does nothing to prevent most people from buying, owning and using their weapons legally.

I do wonder why people vote against their own interests in the name of "personal liberty," or because they are driven by resentment or imagined grievances. Yet people like Trump, and of course the loser ex-President himself, stoke those grievances and resentments with lies and inflammatory rhetoric. These people - the leaders and politicians - are drunk with their power to sway the minority and do nothing positive for anyone.

Anyway, here are a few photos of the derelict Buffalo Central Terminal. It once was an Art Deco landmark, now it's in serious need of major repair. From what I understand, its structure has been stabilized - the roof repaired, access to the interior controlled to prevent further vandalism, but it's still sad to see what it is. The woman in the photo painting over some graffiti told me the thing they need most now is money. 

Permalink: https://kayester.blogspot.com/2021/09/thursday-thoughts-on-road-trip-with-my.html

Tuesday - Back from Buffalo

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post. I've been busy but I'm catching up. I've got plenty of photos to post but I'll only do a few at a time.

I took a short roadtrip to Buffalo NY with Hudson, one of my adult children. We left from Chappaqua on Thursday morning and got back Sunday evening.

My car is a 2004 Saab 9-3 Turbo. Despite its age, it has only 100 thousand miles driven, so it’s young for its years. The only real issue is with the audio system and that is a story I don’t want to get into now.

Of course, I took a lot of photos, of course I chatted with people, and we drove around quite a bit, just looking. Buffalo has changed and is changing, possibly for the the better. The last time I was there the East Side, especially the ghetto, looked terrible. There were abandoned homes, wrecked cars, trash filled lawns and such everywhere. Since then, the abandoned homes have been razed, the wrecks towed and where there were ruined houses there are now mowed lawns.

Some of the empty and desolate industrial lots where the ruins of factories and warehouses could be seen behind razor wire topped cyclone fences across a field of high weeds, have been removed. Now there is an empty field or new construction – not necessarily attractive but less of an eyesore than before. The former air of despair and abandonment is no more.

Hudson noted that the city seemed more provincial than the Brooklyn, where they live - actually they said less cosmopolitan - but I pointed out that Brooklyn has nearly 10 times as many people, and that for a smallish city, Buffalo does okay.

One thing Buffalo has is interesting local foods. Buffalo chicken wings are nationally known. Less known are the roast beef on kummelweck sandwiches, and Texas red hots. On Saturday afternoon, we drove to Tonawanda to eat at Ted's Red Hots on Sheridan Drive. It's not far from where my late friend, John Farrell lived.

Texas red hots are the Buffalo/Erie County version of hot dogs. They are good enough that former residents visiting from out of town, such as myself and the family pictured, will make a side trip to eat some. The place is popular: witness the line of people getting their orders.

The staff is friendly and so are the customers. After all, how can you be miserable when you are about to eat a terrific locally produced hot dog with fixings?

The woman in the Buffalo State sweatshirt is a teacher of special needs kids in the Buffalo school system. She seems like a very special person herself. Her sister was just a little shy about my taking her photo.

                                        

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Wednesday - Still digesting Texas imitating Communist East Germany

 The anti-abortion movement is against democracy. In Texas it has convinced the Republican Party that dividing people against each other is the best way to eliminate abortion in their state. The state itself no longer needs to concern itself with directly investigating and prosecuting the people and organizations that provide abortion services, that role has been delegated to private individuals. At the same time, this opens up an Informer State and potentially a form of Communist totalitarianism that Texans should be revolted by rather than embrace.

I am not sure I understand the motivations of the Texas Republican controlled legislature and executive. On the one hand, they have often sought to limit access to the courts on civil matters with the aim of restricting the right to sue. But this law goes in the opposite direction and makes abortion a civil liability, with enforcement devolved to private individuals. There is little good here and lots of potential ill. For one, it aims to make everyone a snitch against their neighbors, not just for moral but also financial gain. It will possibly clog up the courts with poorly structured and unprovable case and act to limit speech.

This law brings to mind the Stasi, the secret police of the German Democratic Republic - more often known as Communist or East Germany. Stasi turned the people against each other. You never knew who was an informer and you could be made suspect for no reason or any reason. Texas is trying to become a police state where everyone is empowered to act as a cop, but who will police the police?

So what can we do? Well, we can start with economic boycotts: no more Texas products in your home, letter writing campaigns to companies headquartered there to let them know that they will be boycotted as accessories and abettors. And so on. They've kept their mouths shut on this issue and so silently support the implementation of a new form of Communistic surveillance state. Many of the anti-abortionists, who show that at heart they are totalitarian in their attitude toward disagreements over opinion rather than fact, are not motivated by money, but politicians, no matter what their public moral stance, usually are. 

So let's hit them where it hurts if we can and boycott Texas. It's your right and even your duty.

Saturday - It's still hurricane season but we own the little sump pump that can

 What a week! 

Monday was pretty normal but Tuesday we started prepping for what would be Tropical Depression Ida, what Hurricane Ida had become by the time it reached the metro-NYC area. We expected lots of rain and some strong but not outrageous wind so we filled some buckets with fresh water in case the power went out - our water supply is an artesian well but if there's no power, the water pump doesn't work, made sure anything that could get knocked over or blown around was secured, and that was it.

Tuesday night it started raining and raining and raining. It rained so hard and so fast that it was cascading down the terraces and stairs in the backyard. It was accompanied by a huge thunderstorm with dramatic lighting bursts. It was a seriously intense storm, indeed. By the time it slowed down, we had about two feet of water in the basement. Our 200+ year old house has a stone foundation so it will let some water in but it was spurting in through some spots. 

There wasn't anything I could do about it so I went to sleep. When I got up at 4AM I checked to see how much water was in the basement, expecting I'd be baling all day until we could get a plumber to come. I was pleased to see the floor was wet but there were no puddles or pools. Outside, I checked the outlet pipe from the sump pump and it was spewing water into the stream running down the road.

That sump pump never gave out, it just kept ond oing what it  was supposed to do. We got off easy: the fuel pump and controller for our furnace needed to be replaced and that was it. Out internet connection went offline for a few hours but considering the bigger picture, that was a mere inconvenience.

MetroNorth Commuter Railroad got hit hard.They cancelled service on Thursday while they cleaned up the tracks, and one of their lines, the Hudson, is still out while they clear the wash-outs and mudslides.

Central Park in NYC had over 5" of rain in one hour. Around us, we got somewhere between 6" and 7" overnight, a few miles north in Mt. Kisco, over 9" was measured.

We might not be able to do much about it, and even the best preparations can prove sorely inadequate, but we sure do like talking about it.