let's date this thing

One of the things I reckon I should be doing in keeping this blog is not merely rattling on about myself, but tossing a few current events in here and there to inform readers (present or future) and date this blog for future reference. In other words, I have a feeling that this blog, should it survive until my death at the ripe old age of 89 in 2075 or early 2076 (or even longer), would be more enlightening and stimulating for its future readers if it contained some hint of the historically significant things were going on in the world or nearby at the time that I wrote it. So! To that end, I'll be trying to include bits of news in future posts, should something strike me as being significant. Right now, as I write these words, the Station Fire is raging some miles west of here in the Los Angeles National Forest between Acton and Altadena, all over Mount Wilson and the surrounding hills. It's slowly creeping down the slopes toward settlements in the valleys. Some homes have already been lost. Worse, the fire has already killed two firefighters; their car rolled down a hill. The Station Fire has grown steadily from 13,000 to more than 30,000 square acres in just two days. Yesterday's news reports said that the fire was only 5% contained; but the L.A. Times this morning has stated that the fire doubled in size last night. It's called the Station Fire because it started near a fire station. Even this distance away (my parents' house sits on the most extreme eastern fringe of Apple Valley, halfway between that principality and the tiny burg of Lucerne Valley to the east, in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains), I can look out my window and see the effects of the fire. For the past two days the entire valley, horizon to horizon, has been coated with the yellowish-brown haze of drifting, dissolved smoke. You can smell it in the air. The gigantic plume of smoke obscured the western sky at first, three days ago, then spread out and covered the area thinly but definitely. It weighs on the spirits like a cloudy day, not just from the sickened appearance it imparts to the countryside, but the knowledge of its origin: the devastation it has wreaked and is still wreaking among the plants, animals and people of the national forest to the west. Just a few days ago, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy died at age 77. His funeral was all over the news networks for two days. Though I was no fan of his political views, nor his history with women, I still did not wish for his death. The Democrats have done two things in the wake of Senator Kennedy's passing: they have either mourned it as the passing of "Camelot," as the Kennedy Administration in the 1960s was known (Ted was the last living member of the immediate Kennedy family, a dynasty that has been active in American politics for decades)...or they have tried to parley his death into a sales pitch for "Obamacare," as Obama's much-hyped and controversial health care plan has come to be called. Some senators insist that "this is what Senator Kennedy would have wanted," while the conservatives and even some in the media blast them for using Kennedy's death for political agenda advancement. Judge as you see fit. I'm just glad the media has made as big a stink over Senator Kennedy's death as they did over Michael Jackson's death a few months back. I don't deem anything regarding Michael Jackson fit to print here, so we'll move on. There remains little to tell that is not old news. Some months ago former president Bill Clinton flew to North Korea in a surprise visit to that totalitarian nation's martinet of a dictator, Kim Jong-Il, to negotiate for the release of the two Korean-American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who were captured near the Korean-Chinese border five months before. (Which side of the border they were on remains the topic of much debate.) Even more surprisingly, Clinton negotiated successfully and quickly, and the two journalists were flown back to the States and reunited with their families within the week. I was most intensely relieved to hear this. I shudder to think of what the two women could have been in for (they had been sentenced to twelve years' hard labor for entering the country illegally and "malicious acts against the state"). I was glad that they had been rescued. I'm no fan of Bill Clinton but I applauded him for this. There were some, though, who blasted him for stooping to negotiate with a belligerent tyrant like Kim (and I can definitely see their point), but the main thing was just to get those two American civilians home. The only really big thing that I can think of that's happened recently is that Barack Obama was elected president back in November of 2008; but that was five months before I started keeping this blog, so we'll let that one go.