What Hell Is This?
This morning, we woke up inside our Paso Robles place and discovered, first, the smell of smoke. Fortunately, our house was not on fire. But a whole lot of California was.
Hundreds of wildfires were burning around Our State. No, I am not exaggerating. Our Department of Forestry reported that we had 10,800 lightning strikes around California, and those bolts had ignited 367 wildfires. Some of those fires were burning in counties just north of us, and, unfortunately, our prevailing winds from the northwest had blown an immense amount of smoke our way.
In fact, so much smoke had drifted over us that our air pollution control district issued an air quality alert this morning. It said the air we were breathing was unhealthy — not just for vulnerable populations, but for “everyone.”
I tried to find out more, but it turns out that we were in the midst of an Internet outage that was affecting much of our Central Coast. That meant we had no WiFi — and the only way we could access any websites or emails would be through our iPhone “G” system of transmission. I have no idea what that means, of course — and no clue how many “G’s” one needs to be able to resolve websites or emails.
I just know my phone couldn’t do it. Not enough “G” power, darn it.
So — with smoke inside the house — yes, we closed our windows — and with my being unable to access any news websites — I decided to get my usual morning walk out of the way early. After all, we’d been having a tremendous heatwave around these parts in recent days (more on that in a bit) — so I wanted to try to beat the hot stuff by getting out “early” — at least, early for me.
So there I was at 6:45 this morning, heading down my street and out our development’s gates and into the neighborhoods across Sherwood Street. And what an amazing experience, on this unforgettable morning. 
The air was filled with smoke from those wildfires. The sun came up, and its brightness was so diminished that you could look at it, head-on, without burning your eyes out. Our sky was absolutely gray. That sunrise became a point of conversation with other early-walkers as I strolled down Commerce Way and up Scott Street and back on Fontana Road. Everyone I met seemed as amazed as I was that our air was so polluted this morning that we could gaze at the sun without fear of blindness.
By 7:45, I was back home. Still no Internet. But it was getting hotter, and we knew we were “in for it” again today.
You see, we’ve been having record-breaking temperatures all across the West ever since our return from Ames last week. On Monday, Paso Robles set a single-day record of 114 degrees. Yesterday, we “only” hit 111 degrees. Today, we are supposed to reach 106.
And, of course, along with those high temperatures came rolling power outages around the state — and pleas by power companies to conserve electricity. We hadn’t had those rolling outages around these parts for years — ever since our energy crisis in the early part of this century. (Don’t confuse these rolling outages — which are planned — with the panic-driven outages we had a few years ago, when more wildfires had erupted, some of them caused by high winds that had blown “live” power lines down.)
So now, the blame game has started in California. We’re good at that game. Whenever something bad happens, those who might have foreseen it — or prevented it — start pointing fingers at everyone else who might have foreseen or prevented it.
This time around, the blame seems to be aimed at those who could not predict — as the state kept shifting to “renewable resources” like wind and solar to provide more and more power — and as “traditional” power sources were taken off line — that trouble could erupt if we had a tremendous heat wave like this one — and needed electricity through the night to continue to power air conditioners.
Guess what? At night, electricity from rooftop solar panels and solar farms rapidly drops to zero. Didn’t anyone — anyone — think about that? Yes, we really needed Johnny Carson’s “Carnac” on the case. Alas, both Johnny and his Mystic from the East are long gone.
But we’re still here, in this Great(?) State of California on this Wednesday afternoon in August 2020. And here’s what we have. A horrendous heat wave. Raging wildfires. Lousy, unhealthy air quality. And, oh yes, an ongoing coronavirus pandemic that state residents, in our infinite wisdom, cannot unite on. Instead, we continue to bicker mindlessly about whether wearing a mask violates someone’s rights.
And we came back early from Ames — for this?
Well, yes. Because as Ames is now finding out — those students who have returned to classes this week at Iowa State University are bringing with them not just the coronavirus, but absolutely no sense of responsibility about slowing its spread. Yes, ISU made the network news this week, after tons of outdoor student partying in Campustown this past weekend.
Seems none of those little darlings had any sense at all. They weren’t wearing masks. They weren’t social distancing. They were, simply, irresponsible, as “children” of that age are prone to be.
Social media in Ames is, of course, in a tizzy over all this — and this time, that “tizzy” seems justified. As one social media poster put it — somewhat inelegantly, but to the point — the students are “treating us like we’re a f–king Petri dish.”
So Ames, it seems, is about to endure its own kind of hell, courtesy of the coronavirus — and this, coming after a massive windstorm devastated much of Iowa last week. In this annus horribilis, there seems to be no escape from some kind of mess or another.
But at least the Internet just came back on. I think I’ll post this before it goes out again.