As I type this, it is still light out and it's past 8:30 in the evening. We've just entered June, the month where the sun goes highest in the sky. That, of course, is a very big deal in a region where sometimes you don't actually see the sun for weeks at a time.
Today it was about 85 degrees outside (about 23-24C), which was a bit hot, being that two weeks ago it still felt like late Winter. It appears that our Summer is kicking in early, after a mostly non-existent Spring. Eighty degrees F in Seattle is wondrous. I call it California Weather.
COTTONWOODS = LATE
The frogs are croaking at night, and the cottonwood trees are trying to let loose with their 'cotton', but when I am riding my bicycle around during late afternoons, early evenings, and/or early mornings, it is hard to shake this bizarre feeling that nature simply can't make up its mind as to where it truly is in the cycle of seasons.
Work for me has slowed down a lot. My employer is taking a several week break after several years of non-stop work. That gives me a little extra time to attempt to get my yard looking like an actual yard, instead of a jungle. I also have more time for fiction writing and slide guitar practice.
My radio hobby has been here and there. I am finishing a blog article on the Grundig G2, a radio that I use mostly for SW listening. SW radio listening conditions have been iffy at best. There are nights where I may hear 10 stations (most of them unreadable or grainy sounding, with a lot of fading), and other nights where there may be five stations and lots of static. MW conditions are about the same as they've been since 2016 or so -- fair.
At around seven in the evening my trusty old Thermometer said that it was 82 degrees F (about 28C).
THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE
When I started this blog, in March of 2015, there was a lot more going on in life, and a lot more to hear on the radio airwaves. Sometimes I look back and wonder at how I got so many ideas for different blog posts.
In some of the older posts, I talked about what I was reading. Lately I've been reading Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee.
The Third Chimpanzee is a fascinating book, as it details the bizarre nature of human psychology (sexual selection, tendency for mankind to exterminate various animal species, etc.). There is also a section on language, and a description of the spread of the Indo-European languages from a suspected Indo-European homeland just north of, and in between, the Black and Caspian Seas.
One surprising thing is that Mr. Diamond -- a well-educated academic and geographer -- read the same two books on the Indo-Europeans that I did, and he even quotes them in The Third Chimpanzee. I bought both books new in the 1990's, when I had the money to spare and there was a huge bookstore ten to 15 blocks from where I worked in Downtown Seattle -- Colin Renfrew's Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins and J.P. Mallory's In Search Of The Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth.
Being an amateur linguist and amateur historian, I always found the origins of language and my European ancestors intriguing. It wasn't enough to know my ancestors came from Scotland, Ireland, Germany and England -- I wanted to know where they originally migrated from thousands of years earlier. Those two books helped me understand that. And Mr. Diamond talks about the Indo-European migrations in The Third Chimpanzee.
Jared Diamond is a very good writer for an academic -- he has another book out (available also on eBook), called Collapse, about the Viking colony in Greenland (A.D. 900-1300 or so), and how it prospered before collapsing in the 1300's.
The medieval Norse Greenland colony is a fascinating story. Started by Viking settlers and adventurers who took off from Iceland in the 900's (when the Faroe Islands were also settled), the colony was able to benefit from a period of warm climate that ended in the 1300's with the "Little Ice Age" -- a period of time when Winters got longer and Summers much shorter and colder.
They still don't know what happened to the original Norse Greenlanders. Some believe the remaining stragglers were taken in by Inuit people who lived farther north.
Jared Diamond's short eBook Collapse is a fascinating look at the Viking Greenland colony -- which lasted over 300 years.
The sun about to set over the distant hill on a warm, early evening. It felt a little strange to be out on my bike and not need an extra layer of clothing (most evenings and mornings here have been cold over the past nine months -- I'd have to put on an extra coat when riding my 10-speed on the trail).
RECEIVING MY FIRST 'JAB'
On days like today these echoes from a distant past take hold of the imagination -- as there isn't really too much else going on.
I got my first corona vaccine shot about a week and a half ago. I didn't feel anything when the nurse injected the vaccine, and luckily, I had no side effects.
And, contrary to some wacky rumors out on the internet, no, my jab is not magnetic. No coins stick to my skin where I got my shot. There is still a certain amount of fear out there concerning the new vaccines. That's nothing new in itself: there was fear with the introduction of the polio vaccine in the 1950's and also the first Swine Flu Vaccine in the mid-1970's. Right now in my county in Washington state, 97% of the corona infections occur in unvaccinated people, which is a sign that the vaccines are working.
A lot of people around here still wear masks, and socially distance. I know that I do. I also do as I have done for years: I take garlic extract pills, zinc tablets, ginseng, Vitamin E, and exercise.... Trying to load the dice in my favor when it comes to health.
I try to keep track of news from Europe and other areas of the world as I have online friends in Europe (Germany, Austria and Norway) and elsewhere. I know that there have been varying lockdowns in Europe, and also lockdowns in Melbourne, Australia (I have some online friends there, also). Canada still has some quarantines.
The only thing I can say -- to all my readers, American as well as the other half of my readers who are in the rest of the world -- is try to keep up hope. We'll all get through this, and hopefully we shall all be stronger for it.
My cats enjoying the balmy, Summer-like weather. I took all these pics with my Fuji AX-655 camera, which fixed itself after a couple years of not working (its lens was locked in the open position). I have a blog post on how that all happened.
STAY SAFE, STAY POSITIVE
In closing, I hope to have my article on the Grundig G2 published before the end of the month. It just needs a couple more pictures. It is an amazing little receiver -- it picks up Shortwave stations about the same off the whip as it does with my indoor 25 ft. / 10 meter wire clipped to it (with an alligator clip). It does excellently on FM, and is a good MW radio as well. It's the only radio I have used to listen to SW for the last few years.
Until next time, I hope this article finds each and every one of you doing well. Stay safe, and stay positive. Peace.
C.C. 6-2-2021
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