Happy Easter

For those of our readers who celebrate Easter, I wish you a happy and spiritual day. I hope you are surrounded by loved ones, and share with them the traditional Easter feast. It is normally a joyous holiday.

Travel Blogging VIII

Home at last, both flights without incident, on time and efficient. TSA was again cheerful, I congratulated them on getting paid. 

Both flights today on a feeder airline - Sky West - that operates as Delta's surrogate hereabouts. The planes and gates say Delta but the personnel and planes belong to SW, headquartered in St. George. It flies nice Canadian and Brazilian narrow body commuter jets that seat 2 and 1 in first class and 2 and 2 in coach, I prefer them to Boeing 737s and the Airbus equivalents.

They provide flights to places which Delta otherwise might not bother to serve. If today was at all typical, they are carrying a lot of coach and first class pax.

A nice trip and a nice cluster of memories of traversing one of our great rivers. Our next adventure is the semi-annual relocation from one house to the other. That happens in just under 2 months. 

Seeing the Elephant

New York City is nobody’s idea of a conservative bastion. I believe we can be certain there is minimal racial bias in the NYPD’s statistics. I have for you a link to their data for 2024, the most recent available and very likely representative of recent years. 

Whites are the largest population group in NYC, followed by Hispanics followed by non-Hispanic Blacks. However whites are very underrepresented in gun crimes, including murder, shootings, etc. Ditto in sex crimes of various stripes. Blacks are over represented both as perps and as victims. Hispanics somewhat less so.

Someone who has further massaged the data claims the following:

There have been nearly 19,000 suspected shooters recorded in New York City since 2006. Only 1.5% were listed as White.

As a person who has been paying attention, I’d risk a guess you don’t find the above especially shocking. It is the elephant in the room nobody is supposed to mention or admit noticing.

Travel Blogging VII

We are tied up alongside in Clarkston, WA and have reached the end of our passage. We are at the south edge of the Palouse country of Eastern WA, and the other side of the river is Lewiston, ID. The terrain is gently rolling hills on which wheat is grown. The “coastal feeling” is gone, we’ve reached “big sky” country.

We will overnight here on the boat and fly out tomorrow morning. Some pax are taking jet boat trips to Hells Canyon but we’re just staying aboard. Tomorrow night we’ll be home in eastern Nevada, after changing planes in SLC.

We’ve already decided to take another trip with American Cruise Lines, the next one on the Tennessee rivers from Nashville to Chattanooga. It happens in mid-October. We hope to visit friends in the Knoxville area while there.

Serendipity

ICE agents had gotten an image as roughhouse goons grabbing innocent people for export. Then POTUS sent them to help TSA at the airports and … viola! … we discovered they were nice people assigned a dismal task. 

Lots of flyers learned that ICE were normal folks and not fanged monsters; it is an excellent outcome. I believe it took a lot of wind out of the ICE Out movement’s sails.

Ad Astra

Blogfather Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) is a long-time science fiction fan, it crops up in his stuff from time to time. With a US team launched on a trip around the moon, this becomes one of those “times.”

He’s right about our return to space being long overdue. I’d hoped to see men on Mars in my lifetime, but probably won’t. He’s younger than I, maybe he’ll get lucky. I have some chance of seeing a human colony on the moon, and that will be excellent.

After being a hotshot outfit all those years ago, NASA morphed into a geriatric bunch who seemingly can’t shoot straight. Careerism in FedGov acts like a wasting disease, for which we seemingly have no cure.

Reynolds is probably right that Elon Musk will spearhead the return to space. Musk wants it in his lifetime and has the money to get what he wants. 

I’m a longtime science fiction fan too. The space frontier awaits, let’s go!

Travel Blogging VI

Greetings from Richland, WA. Sky overcast, rain today as well as late yesterday. No visit to the Northwest would be right without being rained on a couple of times. Actually, by the region’s standards we’ve have good weather, several dry days. It remains cool, not frigid.

This is a part of the northwest I’ve not spent much time in. In our RV travels we’ve driven through this area a couple of times but had no destinations hereabouts to draw us back. 

The area isn’t heavily populated and tends to be conservative. The vibe is more upper Midwest than Coastal. Parts of this region have tried to secede and join Republican Idaho, so far with no success. Counties in eastern OR have held votes on it.

I’m told we reach the Lewiston/Clarkston area tomorrow, and fly out the next day. We’ve had an excellent time, the crew spoils us to an embarrassing extent, and feed us at every opportunity. Last night was prime rib.

The Columbia River heads north at Richland, and we split off onto the Snake River and keep heading east. Ironically, the south fork of the Snake passes a 20 minute drive from our place in WY. Of course we aren’t cruising anywhere near WY, we’d have to cross southern ID to get there, and that is an all day drive.

Political Gain and Economic Self-interest

Power Line’s John Hinderaker shares some scientific findings on the issue of climate change.

We use the Epica-Vostok Ice core dataset, a single proxy dataset for temperature data sampled every century for the last 800,000 years or so and ask the question “Is a 1.1°C temperature rise in a century unusual in this dataset?”

Usually, the Earth is caught in a deep freeze. Happily, we are living in an inter-glacial warm period. In fact, the Earth has been warmer than it is today the overwhelming majority of the time since the end of the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago.

The overwhelming weight of scientific evidence refutes the global warming catastrophism that is relentlessly propagated for reasons of political gain and economic self-interest.

It would appear another Ice Age is the greater risk. Charts and citations in the original.

Travel Blogging V

Today is what on an ocean cruise is called a “sea day,” that is a day spent cruising from place to place. One not spent in tied up alongside in port. We are sailing upriver on the Columbia, and as I write this have just passed through the locks at John Day dam. We shared the lock with a pleasure craft - a cabin cruiser of maybe 30’.

Locks are a feature of river cruising, we’ll pass through eight on our way upstream to the Lewiston/Clarkston area - four each on the Columbia and Snake rivers. The most locks I’ve ever seen on one crossing is on the Rhine-Main Canal linking the Rhine and Danube rivers, we’ve passed through those on several trips from Amsterdam to Vienna.

We are having a lazy day, I slept in. The scenery continues to be excellent. Right now we are sailing beside a quite large mountain that is a mile or so north of the river. There are wind turbines atop it, as usual not turning. We will look back and marvel at how dumb those were.

I believe our next stop is near Pendleton. We see much evidence of long-ago vulcanism, outcrops of basaltic rock. This region continues to be a place where volcanoes lie hopefully dormant, but some clearly are not so quiet - Mt. St. Helens, for example. 

The weather continues with overcast skies, the norm in this region. Atypically no rain so far, I expect some and will be surprised if the cruise ends having experienced no rain. Californians drive up here in summer and marvel at how green it is, compared to CA. Many don’t realize it has to rain a lot for that to occur.

Research: Leaving CA Pays Off

Hot Air reports research findings that show people who leave California for elsewhere end up being better off financially - more likely to become homeowners - than those who stayed behind. This is no surprise but also no small thing.

I don’t remember sharing our personal example of moving our residence-of-record from CA to WY. We saved enough in state income and sales taxes to pay for a nice overseas trip every year.

WY has NO state income tax and the sales tax is 4-5% instead of 8-10% in CA. The big savings is not paying state income tax.

The DrsC can afford to live in CA but we are better off financially living elsewhere. Plus government policy in WY more closely aligns with our conservative values. If WY isn’t the most Republican state it is certainly among those few in contention for that honor.

Alberta to Vote on Independence?

Gambling site Polymarket has the odds of a referendum for independence in Alberta this year at 60%. Stephen Green posting at Instapundit has the story. 

Things could get spicy in the oil patch up north!

Travel Blogging IV

Greetings from The Dalles, OR. Weather overcast and cool but no rain. Town is tired and past its prime. It reminds me of a lot of towns which the Twenty-first Century has passed by, Oroville in particular. 

Both towns experienced a boom while their dam was built, and then languished when the high-wage construction workers moved on to the next site. Too many residents live in far-from-new mobile homes.

The town name means rapids which once existed on the Columbia River at this location, before dams and navigation became prevalent. The terrain hereabouts features large blocks of basalt and fairly could be called semi-harsh.

We’ve left most of the coastal conifer forest behind. Locals call this a semi-desert as it only gets a CA amount of rainfall, on the order of 14” a year.  Still, like CA at this time of year, it is green as anything and the fruit trees are blooming.

We’re eating too much and taking it easy, the crew is spoiling us rotten. The scenery on this river cruise is a lot better than on the Mississippi, not so flat. On Old Man River mostly all you see is a wall of trees on both banks and the terrain behind the trees rarely raises high enough to be visible.

Escape from LA

Yet another milestone in the ‘decline and fall’ of California, this time reported on X by long-time Los Angeles independent TV station KTLA, Channel 5. 

LEAVING LOS ANGELES: L.A. County saw the largest decline of any county in the United States in 2025, according to new census data.

It’s no record to be ‘proud’ of. Snake Plissken was unavailable for comment. 

—————

I watched the Spade Cooley and Ina Ray Hutton shows on Ch. 5 in the 1950s. It was one of only three channels we could get some 50+ miles NW of LA. 

Like much live TV of the era, in retrospect it was embarrassingly poor stuff in snowy B&W but we watched it anyway. The Ch. 5 broadcasts of the New Years Day Rose Parade were better than the networks’ offerings.

Travel Blogging III

Good morning from Kalama, Washington. It is a river-port town almost half way from Astoria ton Portland, heading upriver. Weather sunny after rain was predicted. Rain now said to arrive tonight, we’ll see.  

From here most pax will visit Mt. St. Helens volcano by bus, and will be gone most of the afternoon. From ship to buses was a long walk but we’ve old legs and found the prospect daunting so we’ll stay aboard. We often do this, and have the ship to ourselves while most pax are ashore.

The passengers (pax) of this ship are like the residents of our winter 55+ village in NV, looking at them you’d imagine nearly all oldsters are long married, at least somewhat happily. I doubt the statistics show that to be the case for the population at large. Both 55+ developments and cruises tend to be favored by the long married, quite possibly because such folk are more financially able to afford them.

You have to wonder what the older divorced and never married do for entertainment and where they choose to live in retirement. I’d guess they may not live as long - on average - as the married. Those of our friends who divorced and remarried tend to have less money to live on than those long together. Two can truly live more cheaply than one on a per capita basis, and with any luck they have two retirements coming in.

Travel Blogging II

Good morning from chilly, overcast Astoria, on the cool, damp north Pacific Coast. Something West Coast natives seldom admit: coastal skies are often overcast, or even foggy, in the morning. It often, but not always, “burns off” by noon or one pm.

When I lived in the Bay Area for several years, I would joke that every weather forecast would include the following. “Night and morning low clouds clearing locally inland in the afternoon, highs in the 50-60s, lows in the 40s.” That was the forecast something like 300 days a year.

It is a damp cold. A well-dressed gentleman in post-war San Francisco wore a topcoat over his suit and tie, and wasn’t too warm. Mark Twain joked the coldest day he ever experienced was a breezy summer (!) day in SF.

Astoria is at the mouth of the Columbia River, on the coast. Ocean-going ships sail upriver as far as Portland, which is a fair distance.

We’ve sailed down here and beginning tonight will commence sailing upstream to the juncture with the Snake River, which we will then take upstream to the neighboring cities of Lewiston ID and Clarkston WA, named for the famous explorers. We will follow their route home as far as Lewiston before disembarking and heading for our home.

Later … We took a bus tour of Astoria in the late morning, learned this area was settled by Scandinavians of all sorts, with emphasis on Finns. The guide joked who but Scandinavians would find a cloudy, cold place with million of conifers and lots of fish so entirely homelike. They looked around and said we know how to make this place work for us and stayed. Nordics predominate down this coast until nearly SF. From SF south the ethnicity of watermen switches to an Italian and Portuguese mix. 

When as a grad student I lived for 3 years in Eugene OR, I shared a house with a couple of other  B-school grad students. One of these - Olson from MN - thought the lack of snow was lovely; from CA, I hated the incessant drizzle. Same northwest weather - seen from two perspectives - reaching opposite conclusions. Life is like that.

Travel Blogging I

Greetings from Portland, Oregon. Weather here is atypically beautiful, flight here from St. George UT uneventful. TSA in St. George fully operational w/o aid of ICE, essentially zero wait time.

We overnight in an Embassy Suites and head out tomorrow a.m. early. We will begin with a visit to Multnomah Falls, followed by boarding our river boat, arriving in time for lunch. If we can post pix, they will appear at the other DrC’s blog.

Tomorrow afternoon we cruise west toward the coast, destination Astoria. That is a stretch of the Columbia I have not seen. Anticipation for an enjoyable week aboard is widely shared by pax we met at tonight’s cocktail party.

Update

We go traveling tomorrow and will be away from the desktop for over a week. Thus, the usual Friday Snark and Saturday Snark will be missing this weekend. With luck they may return next weekend. 

In the meantime - via the IPad - expect some “travel blogging” of our river cruise up the Columbia and Snake rivers. We’ve traveled with American Cruise Line before, on the Mississippi, and enjoyed that very much. We expect no less from the next week or so. We have fingers crossed about TSA delays on tomorrow’s flight to Portland.

Review: Young Sherlock

The DrsC recently semi-binge watched the first season of Young Sherlock on Amazon Prime Video streaming. Endeavoring to avoid spoilers for this fresh approach to the classic Conan Doyle character, let me say upfront we liked it and look forward to a second season.

The characters are interesting, multidimensional, and at least three hark back to the Doyle original. The Brits do this sort of historical stuff so well, it’s a joy to just take in the period costuming and scenery. In this telling, Holmes has a different sister, not Enola, but Beatrice. Both his parents have major roles in this first season. It isn’t perfect, but very nice nonetheless. 

Full disclosure: I am a lifelong Sherlockian, one of the first adult books I owned (and still have) is a well-thumbed, doorstop-sized Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. Jeremy Brett did my favorite TV version of the famously quirky adult Holmes.

More Good News

The International Olympic Committee has banned biological males from competing in women’s events in the Olympics. The ruling is effective with the 2028 summer games in Los Angeles. Politico has the story.

Score it as another battle won in the war against woke; this one on the international level no less.

Why Homelessness

At COTTonLINE we don’t often raise the topic of homelessness, because we are fortunate to live far from where it mostly occurs - in cities. Unlike urban folk, we don’t live with the squalor and hassle day in and day out.

Writing at City Journal, Heather Mac Donald gets quite specific about who is homeless, who makes a living off of ‘helping’ them, and what false ‘facts’ our society has to believe to let it persist. If the issue is relevant to you, her column debunks current programs, clarifies where we are, and condemns it.

Preserving public safety, keeping streets clean and passable, building and maintaining transportation infrastructure, safeguarding property—those functions are embarrassingly bourgeois and repressive in the eyes of every nonconservative politician and bureaucrat. Today, progressive governance prioritizes the antisocial, the deviant, and the alienated over the law-abiding majority, which is increasingly cast in the role of a revenue source rather than a constituency to be served.

As long as the “woke” control city governments and persist in protecting the right to public insanity and addiction, your only practical option is to avoid cities as much as possible.  

I did learn one useful acronym from Mac Donald’s column, it is MICAs,  a label for Mentally Ill, Chemical Abusers. Most of the homeless are exactly that and should be receiving involuntary inpatient treatment and housing, out of the public eye.