Idiotic Posturing

      So, the Mayor of NYC asked New Yorkers to set their thermostats no lower than 78° through these hot days -- and the Federal Department of Energy, which has given the generic version of the same advice on their website for a long time, took those pages down.

     Elsewhere, conservative politicians grumbled about "socialism."

     Of course, the Mayor of New York has no authority over people's thermostats.  Nor does he run that city's electric utility which, like most of 'em, struggles to maintain adequate infrastructure.  Power companies can usually keep up, but extreme weather events -- here's looking at you, Texas -- stress the grid, and it doesn't make any difference what flavor the local politicians are.  You can only draw X much current before it's too much, at which point the system breaks at the weakest points.  Power companies stock parts and size staff for the normal failure rate and a little more when possible, but there's a limit.

     Nature has a way of testing limits.  Nature doesn't take politics in to account.

     There's nothing especially political about managing your air conditioning (or heating), either.  People who are careful about money have been doing so for as long as fuel has had a cost, which is forever (the cost of cutting your own firewood is pretty high, just not in dollars).  The poor insulation and undersized cooling here at Roseholme Cottage means we ran for years at 75° in the summer* and 65° in the winter, though I have cheated up to three degrees on the winter setting as I have gotten older.  The main positive effect of air conditioning is to lower the humidity and move the air, and if you get too far off the outside air temperature, you can start to have problems -- the A-coil may freeze up, the motors for the fan and compressor in the outdoor unit could overheat, and so on.  And boy, will your electric bills soar.  (You can also have personal problems -- going from 70° or 68° dry air into a 95° wall of wet air is physically stressful.)

     I keep the fan running in our HVAC system nearly all the time.  In summer, I add a small floor fan in the dining room/library to blow are from the floor register up, because the return intake is in that room, and there's no point to letting it suck low level cold air right back in.  In the office and living room, simple home-made extensions sit on to of the registers, and discharge cold air about four feet above floor level.  A similar trick in my bedroom makes use of existing shelves to channel the air up, and in the very worst weather, a clip-on fan pushes cool (or heated) air towards my bed.

    Some of those tricks are compensating for the 1990s upgrades to the 1920s system design, which left floor registers near room doors instead of at the farthest corner on an outside wall.  In 1920, a big coal furnace with "gravity" thermosiphon air circulation would have kept the basement almost too warm for comfort in the winter, with warm air flowing up the outside walls to slit vents under the eaves (and up a few inside walls to the attic as well).  Forced-air climate control doesn't work that way, and the original furnace replacement was done when energy was cheap and labor to relocate registers and run all-new ductwork wasn't.  (In winter, I also run an oil-filled electric heater in the basement whenever I'm home and awake; but plug-in electric heat isn't something to turn on and ignore, and it'll never do the same job as the the smelly, sooty old coal furnace did.)  

     Big-city downtowns are full of this kind of relic infrastructure, electric wiring that was adequate in 1920, 1930, cooling that relied on open transoms, windows and getting outside -- and people expiring from the heat.  You can stick a modern split-system air conditioner just about anywhere, but running big enough wires from the pole to the outlet to actually power it is another story.  There might not even be enough room in the conduits to do that in an old apartment building, and copper is costly.  And how big is the stepdown transformer on the pole or in a manhole vault?  How fat are the wires that feed it? 

     There are tricks.  The 110-Volt wall-socket juice my then very modern home had in 1924 is now 125 V most places in the U.S., because they have turned up the voltage on the high-voltage distribution side.  You see, the power available through a wire is the voltage multiplied by the current -- the current it limited by the "ampacity" of the wire, which is proportional to how big it is.  Big wires can carry more current.  Voltage limits rely on how good the insulators are -- and they have always been far better than they had to be.  Ceramic and glass are relatively cheap, power-line insulators aren't all that tricky to replace when they fail (if you happen to be a power company lineman -- don't try it on your own!).  So Power & Light turns up the voltage and hey, presto, they can supply 15 or 20 percent more power!

     That's something, but in a bad heat wave, it's not enough.  It helps run your TV and computer and automatic shiatsu massager and super-slice-o-matic self-cleaning air fryer with vacuum cleaner attachment on a system designed to run a handful of light bulbs and a coffeepot, but when you and everyone else in Manhattan, or Washington D.C., or Pigsley's Corner turns on the air-conditioning and sets it to "Arctic," something will pop.  Maybe your breaker.  Maybe the pole fuse or transformer that feeds your house, and the Smith's, Jones's, Brown's and Doe's apartment house and the bungalow of old Ms X next door.  Maybe it trips a disconnector that keeps cycling, or a transformer's regulating tap-setter at a substation that gets hung up, and a whole neighborhood flickers, goes dark or browns out.  Multiply by a hundred, a thousand--  A power company crew can keep ahead of a few outages, clearing them in mere hours (hours, at 95°), but there is no politics on this planet that will make skilled electrical workers magically appear from the air, along with fuse wire, replacement transformers, and all of the massive, slow-to-replace stuff that fills up a substation.

     There's also no politics that has ever managed to overbuild power grids (etc.) to always hold up to extreme events.  Oh, Ukraine has had a little advantage from hardened Cold War substations, but only if you happened to live in area Soviet planners had deemed critical, and it was never as capacious as its Western counterpart.  Central planning won't save you -- and neither will capitalism.  If you want your power company to turn a profit, you figure out how to price it in such a way that people can afford it;  you build it for the routine loads you have, and you count on having enough staff to keep it going.  Localized trouble, you hire outside help. But a heat wave isn't like a tornado; it doesn't affect just a few townships at a time.

     The DOE's former advice pages and the lefty-Democrat Mayor of New York City were telling people the same thing because that's how you deal with this intersection of physics, economics and weather, period.  It doesn't matter who you are or, which party or person you voted for or how you think things ought to be done.  We have the power grids we have.  We have the outdoor temperature and humidity we have.  City cliff-dwellers in particular aren't going to be installing rooftop solar, home generators or water wheels, and the choice is to turn up the 'stat a few notches now or sweat like pigs by and by, and shovel out the vulnerable dead afterward.

     Freaking out because your side gave the same advice as the other side for coping with this is simply bullshit, practiced by people who are insanely out of touch with what it's like to live a normal life on an average income. 
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* That's not entirely accurate. I chase 15° to 20° below ambient in summer and will settle for 10° on the worst days, guided by condensation on the older windows, state of the A-coil (once it has iced up, you're done until the ice melts), and experience.

Reality

     I found the article, but I didn't bookmark it: it would appear that the state DSA in New York is somewhat at odds with the wider Democratic Socialists of America.

     The reasons why are a microcosm of how political parties work, especially when they are forced to be "big tents," despite the DSA not being a freestanding party.  The tl;dr is that in New York, and NYC especially, the DSA's got a pretty good chance of influencing the Democratic platform and of affiliated politicians winning office, so they're focused on pragmatic goals with some chance of achievement -- it is a city that had a radio station (WEVD) named after Eugene V. Debs for three-quarters of a century, after all.  The dog occasionally catches the car it chases and New York's DSA has learned what to do about it.

     Elsewhere, DSA-linked candidates stand less of a chance; their local Democrat organization is less likely to listen and as a result, True Believers outnumber pragmatists within most of those DSA groups.  Politics is run by Those Who Show Up; ask me, ask Robert Heinlein, ask any of your local Party organizations and you'll get the same answer.  And True Believers are often very good at showing up.

     So outside of NYC, you're much more likely to find the kind of wild-eyed DSA candidates that rate scare headlines and flaming-letter quotes -- in broad outline, the kind of fringe stuff that all fringe parties and movements generate.  Antisemitism's always popular on the horseshoe ends and in various nooks and crannies of U. S. politics, just as it is in Europe, along with broadsides about bosses and cheaters.  But don't read too much into it; in the wider major-party organization, there are a lot more plain old Democrats showing up in the hinterlands.  I stand by my previous post: the function this sort of outsider thing serves is to shake up the big parties when they get too comfortable running things, and I'm never especially sorry to see 'em get a good shaking.

     This is very nearly orthogonal to "leader principle" effects, which can take over a party, at least for a time, and sometimes bend it (see Jackson, Andrew).  I don't like it when any individual politician starts being touted as the Great Hope, especially when they buy into it themselves, and it doesn't matter which party.  The U. S. has a pretty good history of reminding such leaders that they are no more than mortal men, but we've often taken our own sweet time at it and the present run is longer and messier than any.  (FDR got longer at it, but he also got a lot more criticism and outright correction.)  If a sprinkling of DSA-connected Dems will help level the scales, I'm all for 'em -- especially in the U. S. House of Representatives, the (supposedly) fastest-moving and (on paper) highest-turnover collection of elected Federal officeholders we've got.  Reflecting the will of the people, shaking things up, trying even crazy stuff is their job; it's how the Federal government was built from the very start.

About Those Supposed Communists

     The President of the U. S. has been fuming about "communists"* winning primaries in New York City and Colorado.  He appears to be peeved about a subset of Democratic candidates for Congress, who won in very blue districts and who go by "Democratic Socialists of America" and whose politics is, generally, considerably less socialist than Upton Sinclair, Eugene V. Debs or the general trend of the governments of Nordic countries. (All of which just happen to have capitalist economies.)

     We've already got a couple of DSA-affiliated Representatives in the House, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and here's the thing: voters are entitled to pick their representatives.  Indiana regularly sends an assorted bouquet of conservative Republicans to the House, along with one or two big-city Democrats for contrast.  You might deplore the politics of some or all of that delegation, but the majority of voters in their districts wanted them, and so off they go to Congress, to butt heads or collude with their opposite numbers from the various states.  That's how it works.

     In a country with a strong two-party system, and ours is about as entrenched as they come, you're going to find a diversity of opinion within the parties.  Maybe not as much as there used to be; my parents used to shake their heads over that wild liberal (but nominally Republican) Nelson Rockefeller, and express concern at the most stick-in-the-mud of the conservative Southern Democrats.  It really does take all kinds, and ideally, we're going to get all kinds in Congress, where -- maybe! -- they'll actually address substantive issues and try to find some path to accomplishing the things that really need doing.

     I'm not especially hopeful that the members of the House and Senate are going to do much besides make pretty speeches for their bases and assume various traditionally partisan postures, but if sending in a few younger people, who owe less to lobbyists and big business and aren't in lockstep with their party's orthodoxy, will shake 'em up and at least produce some substantive debate, I'll be happy to see it, no matter what it takes.  I'm not too worried they'll pocket the good silver, not while the Executive Branch is all but looting the Treasury and daring anyone to notice, and with all of their seniors in the Legislature giving them the hairy eyeball.

     It's high time we stopped giving away special tax breaks to the rich, especially on Social Security and Medicare.  Chumps like you and me, the more we earn, the more we pay -- but there's a threshold, low by millionaire standards, where those withholdings plateau, and as fewer and fewer people hold more and more money (and income), the shortfalls in those programs grow in direct proportion.  Removing or at least modifying those limits on Medicare and Social Security pay-in for big incomes isn't making the one or two percent pay extra, it's just asking them to pay the same rate as the rest of us.  If it takes a few firebrands with wacky notions to move the needle in that direction, hooray.  If they get too obstreperous, they can always be voted right back out. Try that with a sticky-fingered gazillionaire, and see how far you get!
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* He used the term "godless communist," which is an oldie from 1950s or earlier, popular during the Red Scare, but the two DSA reps presently in Congress consist of one Muslim and one Catholic, neither of which faith lacks in a Supreme Being.  Atheists are screamingly rare among American office-holders and whoever wins in November, you can all but count on 'em being a member of some theistic religion.  Our Congressthings have many flaws, severally and each, but an insufficiency of God ain't among 'em. 

Pork Chops

     The grocer had nice-looking boneless pork chops and I had most of a bottle of sweet chili sauce.  I took this as a sign, and picked up an apple and a yellow onion, along with fresh mushrooms.  The chops got marinated in cider vinegar, soy sauce and a little Worcestershire sauce, with smoked paprika, coriander,* mustard seed, oregano, cilantro,* ginger, garlic and some mild hot-pepper blend.

     The meat spent several hours with the marinade in a big ziplock bag in the fridge (squeeze as much air out of the bag as you can!) before being lifted out and set in a skillet with a little olive oil over medium heat.  I had peeled and cut up the apple, and put the pieces into the marinade as I got them cut, then added them, and cut up and added the onions, followed by a generous pour of the sweet chili sauce, mostly over the meat.  I put the lid on while I sliced six decent-sized mushrooms, and added them, followed by a half-dozen or more bright red "pepper drop" pickled Peruvian peppers and a few chili-tangerine olives, sliced.  I thought a little more sweet chili sauce was in order, so I added some more.  Yes, this is "cooking by ear."  It's a fairly restrained sweet/hot sauce, and works well with apple and onion.

     I put the lid back on and let it simmer, checking a few times and turning the heat down if it was boiling vigorously.  45 or 50 minutes later, it was looking pretty good, and temperature checks confirmed the meat was done (you want to get it over 170°F).  I microwaved some prepared fresh broccoli, with red bell pepper and spices, and there was dinner.  There was a lot of liquid with the meat, not quite gravy-thick, but very nice spooned over the chops and onion.  The apple was mostly cooked down.

     That's it for much actual cooking until the current heatwave is over -- we're having salad tonight, with peanut better and sweet orange marmalade on whole wheat as a backup if we're still hungry.  Next time, I'll marinate the chops overnight; more time is usually better.
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* Coriander and cilantro are the seeds and leaves, respectively, of the same plant, Coriandrum sativum, and people are either okay with it or they really don't like it.  This appears to be largely genetic (there's a little disagreement), so find out which you are before you cook with the stuff!

New Symptom!

     Or not new so much as one I've had before returning, and way more painful.  Nope, not gonna talk about it, but it's really affecting my mobility.  Fun!

     It's as if I have taken Instant Old pills.

Overdid It

      I did too much yesterday, cooking the steaks.  Woke up achy and went back to sleep -- three times!  Only the first was when the alarm went off (and I did feed the cats then).

     Things I can do without making my back hurt: Sleep, bathe, do small grocery trips (no heavy stuff!), wash dishes if there aren't too many, and cook small meals.  I can read on an e-reader in bed.  I can get on the computer some.  TV, really, more than an hour is too long on the low futon couch.  I can do laundry if I move slow and don't try to pick up too much at a time.  I can pick up the cats (one at a time) if I'm sitting down and it's a straight lift.

     I disconnected some of the support for my ham antenna months ago and I can't get back up on the roof to fix it.  There's no way I can move the ladder.

Steaks

     It was a crazy idea.  But I already had hardwood kindling left over from the last time I used the grill, and the lump charcoal bag was nearly empty and therefore lightweight.

     Tam picked up a couple of New York Strip steaks, I puttered around and got the grill going, and by golly, we had steaks and microwaved new potatoes and a bagged salad for Sunday supper!  It's a rare treat these days, and what with one thing and another, it will be a while before we can do it again.

     Might as well enjoy it.

Yes, Still

     I woke up yesterday with a sharp increase in my back soreness.  It wasn't a surprise.  Thursday night is Trash Night and no matter how careful I am, there's a certain amount of lifting and bending to be done.  I kept the weight down to under my fifteen-pound limit and sat on the floor for low work as much as possible: no bending over!

     Nevertheless, there's a price.  Tam and I took a walk around the block soon after we were both awake, which is something that's been helping, but I was still achy.

     And Friday morning, Holden the tomcat was due for a checkup and rabies shot.  I got ready and loaded him into the carrier, which Tam took to my car.  I carried him into the vet, with great care.  He was brave but scared throughout his exam, hiding under a towel most of the time -- a fourteen-pound tomcat!  They are among Nature's great fighters, but they pick their battles and as far as Holden Wu is concerned, the veterinarian is like Sauron or Attila the Hun, far too terrifying a foe for one creature to handle alone.  The folks at the vet were kind enough to carry him to the car and Tam brought him in when we returned home.

     Afterward, I was still sore -- and hungry!  Addressing those needs might as well be a combined task; Good Morning Mama's diner is several blocks away, so I got my ultra-light purse (I'm down to pocketbook, keys, sunglasses, lipstick, hankie, one [1] pen and a backup phone) and headed out.  An hour later, I was back home, fed, feeling a little better, and tired.  I stayed vertical but I didn't do much.  The paperwork for work is at an impasse and I'm getting a little pressure over it, but I can't make doctors fill out forms or insurers process them any more quickly than they already are; I sent out another round of pleas via phone and e-mail.  Presently I am in limbo, neither on official leave nor allowed to return to work without a 100% all-clear from the doctor.

     "When I get better" is a will-o-wisp, and I'm done chasing it.  There are things I can do, things I need to be doing more of (gentle walks and recommended exercises) and things I need to stop fretting over being unable to do.  I may never carry another boatanchor radio up or down the basement stairs, and that's that; there are plenty of lightweight widgets along those lines and I can fiddle with them, if I am careful about it.

     By bedtime, the pain was much reduced and I slept on a cold pack.  This morning I am, at least, no worse.  

I'm....

     ...Frustrated.  Yes.  I'm frustrated.  The whole mess with my back, medical treatment, dealing with being off work, trying to get cleared to work without making my back worse, it's all frustrating.

Reflecting Fool

     While the rule of law (national and international) and long-established government functions come crashing down, I'm hearing a lot of news about the Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC.

     It's a distraction.  Was the repair work graft-laden?  Probably.  Was the previous condition and repair effort over-hyped?  Almost certainly.  But look -- this is a big, shallow hard-surface pool in warm-climate city.  It's filled from the Tidal Pool and/or city water sources,* and in recent decades, every time it gets drained and refilled for whatever reason, it ends up full of green gunk for a while.  You can't have a shallow, slow-moving pool of water in a Washington, DC summer without stuff growing in it, no matter what you have done to the thing.  They'll solve the current mess, including the self-created elements, by and by, and yeah, probably someone's going to line their pockets over it (again!) to the tune of millions or tens of millions.

     But there are people within the Federal government or closely connected to it, ripping off the public coffers or cheating private-spending suckers and rubes of billions of dollars; the destruction of USAID has resulted in deaths on an enormous scale and helped fuel the present ebola outbreak in Africa, which is on the edge of breaking containment.  The only thing that keeps ebola in check is that it kills infected people pretty quickly, and even those who survive it are usually too sick to travel far until they have recovered.  The present version appears to have a slightly longer period of ambulatory-but-infectious, and that's a problem.

     A little bit (or a lot) of green algae in a (usually) pretty part of DC's memorial landscape is insignificant compared to the infectious dead and burial efforts that are barely keeping up.  Millions of dollars are way smaller than billions.  Yes, it's one more embarrassing farce -- but Europe's melting in the summer heat, disease is way up in Africa, and screwworms are infesting American cattle and pets.  We've got more urgent business than pointing at the green water and snickering.
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* Various infographics show a system of nearly Byzantine complexity.  Make what metaphors of it you will. 

Tuesday

     Yes, well.  Um.  Nothing to report.  I feel like low-grade awful.

Monday

     I went to some effort to return to work, and got chided for it.  Because the doctor put restrictions on my activity, there are more Forms to be Filled Out and approved, via a not very obvious procedure with a third party, and until they are, I cannot go back.

     It's not deliberately Kafkaesque, it's just a ramshackle structure put together to deal with the various contracts, rules and laws that apply, or that might apply, or that some attorney woke up thinking would be a problem unless....  But it falls to me, the person with the back problem, to lift it and carry it, and I'm not as good at it as I probably should be.

     Where does it leave me?  I don't know.