Life and all in Redding California
A weekend RS article about the Redding Electric Utility and their policy to evict residents who cannot pay for electricity drew hundreds of comments on Redding.com, making it easily among the most popular articles ever written there. A thread quickly developed that suggested a candlelight protest at a Council meeting. A quick read through reveals the usual level of these mostly anonymous “conversations” with interesting references to the Ruggles brothers lynching, and more negative commentary, mixed in with some possibly interesting ideas. It will be instructive to watch this unfold, if it does. Will this be Redding’s first Flash Mob?
The issue is complex. There are no simple answers. Nobody wants families thrown on the street. Many of those commenting seem to have only a vague notion of what it really means to live without power. Several comments spoke about kerosene heating, solar power, candles, batteries, etc. allowing one to live indoors without power.
The reality is far different.
As a listing agent for bank foreclosures, I saw the remaining evidence of families living in darkness. I saw the candles melted into puddles, and the resulting fire damage, large and small. I saw that the lack of a vacuum cleaner and hot temperatures result in carpets of flea swarms, and imagined children covered in bites. I saw children’s toys scattered amongst rat feces in the cold darkness. I saw food stored in unsafe temperatures and conditions. And back when there were dozens of families living in an abandoned and powerless work camp off Shasta Dam Boulevard, my wife, who is a schoolteacher, saw kids in her class with diseases nobody around here had seen since the nineteenth century. That’s the reality of living without electricity. No candlelight vigil will change that.
Maybe.
Like, I said, it will be interesting to see how it unfolds. The subtext of the comments was predictably blaming REU as heartless, serving as the straw man for trolling. The folks of REU are your friends and neighbors. They don’t want to kick families into the street either, but living without power causes big problems. What’s the answer? I don’t know. It will be interesting to see if the flash mob/protesters have anything positive to offer besides the usual anonymous comments.
Meanwhile about a dozen homeless folks hold a City Hall vigil of their own, out of the rain, in the bleachers just west of the Civic Center. Photo taken a few minutes ago. They are not watching a game, and they are likely not online posting anonymous comments either.
Auto Fuel went up a bit this week, but is still astonishingly low. While it’s lovely to fill up for $25, and definitely bringing out the fuel guzzler classics and monster trucks around town again, it is also somewhat disconcerting. Fuel prices dropped far and fast. There was no abrupt increase in supply. Either the price variation reflects huge loss of demand, or deliberate manipulation of prices. Neither prospect is comforting to consider. There is talk of raising a gas tax. I will be surprised if anyone has the guts to do that, but then it’s been a surprising year.
You can’t get much more ostentatious than this Chrome Mercedes McLaren SLR. At least not yet. Surely the opposite of “green” is chrome.
Heh.
I was given a reprieve by the blog gods, and one of my restore operations brought the old blog back to life. I had spent yesterday moaning and wringing my hands as 3 years of posts turned to dust. Okay, I was more like wailing in sorrow, and shaking my fist at the cursed fates. Ahem. Today, I feel a whole lot better.
I will be more vigorous about fixing errors before they have an opportunity to corrupt the database. But then, I always say that….
Actually, the world without my posts looked just fine, as it turns out. Blogs can be instructive that way. And in 3 years and 120 posts, only a few seemed worth keeping. Most of it is blather, like this one.
I like the photos, though. Like these two I took.
2009 is off to an inauspicious start, here at the ReallyRedding blog. The database had been acting up on the backups, and I thought I’d use the holiday break from work to “fix” whatever was going on with the tables. Instead, it seems to have completely bit the dust. I killed it, somehow. And because the database was acting up on the backups, the backups won’t restore.
3 years of work, 123 posts, abruptly vanish.
Well not exactly. I can still read the posts in raw html. I just can’t seem to publish anything on the old blog. The pages all publish blank.
Much heavy sighing ensues. I was happy with the look and feel we had developed. The content offered a glimpse into my work and thoughts over the last couple of years. It was erratic in the beginning, but I had developed a voice, of sorts, and was posting pretty regularly throughout 2008. You could look back and get a good idea what I was thinking and some insight into my personality. Which I hope was helpful. But it all evaporated somehow. It’s very discouraging.
Well, it’s a new year, or so the calendar says. Perhaps it’s time to wipe that slate clean and move on.
No doubt.
Unless something magic happens to that data, I really don’t have much choice. I will try to re-post some of the work as time goes by.
Perhaps appropriately, a couple of buzzards find a dead possum outside my back window, which only adds visual imagery to my blog’s untimely demise. Watching them work, it occurs to me that this is the reason we humans bury our dead. Nobody wants to watch old Fred the possum as he is dispatched. Nobody wants to see their blog end either, but it inevitably does.
It’s been so beautiful out the last couple days of 2008. A lovely way close out the year. I took the opportunity to shoot a couple of Then and Now scenes in my favorite city. The old photos are courtesy of the Shasta Historical Society (consider joining us) and the new ones I took yesterday.
I didn’t get too technical about duplicating the exact location, but that might be a fun project.
Here’s what the Eaton House project is looking like, all winterized apparently. We save so few of our old buildings in Redding. This is a great opportunity to preserve something of the past.
It’s going to be much better when finished than it had ever been. One thing about Redding’s past is that there wasn’t a whole bunch of architecture really worth saving. Much of what seemed worth saving is gone. The Carnegie Library, The Old Courthouse, the Hall of Records. All dust. Judge Eaton’s house is a fairly ordinary looking thing, and maybe that’s what will make it interesting to future generations.
Merry Christmas to you. I ran into this image while surfing today, and thought I’d share it with you. It was done by an artist on Flickr named Haarnaald you can see HERE. Nice work. Amazing what a skilled photo/artist can do with fractals.
Happy holidays to all!
Here’s a few images of the new McDonalds building on Cypress Ave in Redding, rising from the ruins of the old building. It looks to be very substantial, and much more well constructed than the building it replaces. The old building was destroyed by meteor strike from outer space, as seen below.
Okay, just kidding about the meteor. I would imagine the new McDonalds will include a very modern interior, replacing what was a very dated and run-down restaurant. You would imagine there will be the new self-checkout kiosks included. You can see an example of these kiosks at KIOSK, if you haven’t used one yet. They reduce queue times and labor costs for the business using them, so are very useful, and have been a success in McDonalds stores across the world. I am eager to see how this restaurant will look once completed!
A News Cafe is running a winter photo contest. There are some lovely entries. If you haven’t seen them, you can click HERE and vote for your favorite. I really like Brian Rueb’s entry, which looks like Burney Falls in snow. These two here I took of the western range a couple days ago didn’t make the cut. Sometimes photos just can’t do justice to the real thing.
I entered a shot I took a few days ago in my garden. It was one of 2 entries that featured a Buddha statue, which I thought was interesting. He looks peaceful somehow, in snow.
While Christmas shopping, I went to the on Hartnell, only to find it shuttered and empty. Wow, that’s too bad. Where will shoppers find that perfect gift now?
I wonder what happened? Just over a month ago, I wrote this piece about them for A News Cafe. I hope they just sold out of stock due to unexpected high demand. Then again, perhaps the inventory was trampled in a Wal-Mart like Black Friday incident. Or perhaps they were forced out of business by big-box competition for the erratic bugs-on-pins marketplace. A jealous Turtle Bay Museum conspiracy? Who knows?
Seen in happier days, Redding’s Bug Emporium and Museum was a beacon of knowledge and commerce. Hey, check out those gas prices from just a month ago.