until the smoke clears
I got three days of at least some kind of socializing over the weekend! And that's even with this infernal smoke refusing to go away. I was on the phone with Gabriel for just a little while last night, and of course the smoke came up in conversation. I noted that we've seen this before in recent years, more than once—but, nothing even remotely this severe or long-lasting, and "I've got a pretty fatalistic attitude about it," I said. Gabriel was just kind of like, "Yep." I mean, as I noted on social media on Saturday, the fresh air will return—but, so will this awful smoke, with probably increasing frequency and even longer-lasting, and it's pretty dispiriting to look outside and think about how, well, this is our future.
Then, I got this comment on that post, from my uncle, who is easily the biggest (and most willfully deliberate) dipshit in the family—and mind you, he's got plenty of competition there, so it's almost impressive that he holds such a distinction. (Mind you, he is also connected to extended family members I unfriended on Facebook a couple of years ago for using the N-word; I guess he still follows my posts, and perhaps I should consider just blocking him.) He responded with the most typically ignorant thing possible, really: Climate change has been happening since the beginning of time hoomans have nothing to do with it.
I replied with enough information and clarity, I think, that it shut him up. So far at least, he hasn't responded. But what the hell, I'll share how I responded—because even though this information is widely available, I always feel it's important to source any claims of this level of importance on social media. (The same goes for fundamental claims about the police, the protesters, systemic racism, etc.)
According to whom? People with literally zero background in climate science who regurgitate willfully ignorant far-right talking points? This claim is a widely debunked myth. The climate has not changed this drastically in this short a time frame since long before even the history of humanity, every global warming event in the past was due to CO2 levels, the CO2 concentration in the past century alone has been exponentially higher than it was in the previous 650,000 years, and 97% of climate scientists agree that humans have EVERYTHING to do with it. That's called consensus. I don't have a personal background in climate science either but I sure as shit listen to the ones who do.
https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/17/do-scientists-agree-on-climate-change/
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/climate-has-changed-before.html
And, just to drive the point home, I included a graph from that ACS.org web page, showing CO2 emissions and how their levels over the past 150 years or so are far and away higher than they have been for millennia.
In the short term, now we're just waiting for the winds to shift and blow the smoke, which will actually keep billowing into the atmosphere for god knows how many more weeks, away from our particular area. The problem isn't just that there are some isolated wildfires here and there and the wind happens to be blowing those into our direction. This time, there are countless fires in all three of the West Coast states: Washington, where there are plenty fires to go around; even more fires in Oregon, close enough to be reaching the Portland suburbs; and the most fires are in California, smoke from which has mixed with that from Oregon and a gigantic cloud of smoke has drifted up to settle over the Puget Sound region and, well, just hang out for pretty much a full week so far.
As Gabriel also noted, we are far better off here than many people much closer to the actual fires. But, when it comes to major cities in the world? Briefly over the weekend Seattle has had the worst air quality of all of them; more often Portland has been #1 and that is the case as I write this, with their 217 AQI rating in the "Very Unhealthy" range. Seattle as of this writing is #2, AQI 180 being in the "Unhealthy" range. And, of all major cities on Earth, Portland and Seattle are the only ones with worse air than Delhi, which has long had notorious amounts of smog and pollution in their air! And with San Francisco at #5 and Los Angeles at #6, we have four U.S. cities in the world's top 10 today.
Seattle hasn't seen the kinds of fire-orange skies like what was seen in San Francisco late last week, nor has Portland for that matter, although photos of Portland have been pretty shocking in their own right.
It's fucking insane. This on top of a global pandemic, during which one of the only respites has been to get outside and get fresh air! Not to mention all the other shit: police brutality, authoritarianism, the list goes on.
Anyway. I spent a lot more time on that than I intended to. I wanted to run through the socializing I did over the weekend, and try to get through it as quickly as possible!
I guess I'll work backwards, since it's most relevant to note that Shobhit and I went for a walk last night, even though it was not recommended. Gabriel even told me we shouldn't, when we were on the phone and I had said we were thinking about walking downtown. "It's dangerous," he said. True, I suppose. But, we don't have any air purifiers, although I have had all the windows closed since Friday—a day, by the way, when forecasts were saying earlier in the week would bring relief, and instead it came with emergency alerts about the smoke headed up from the south. Anyway, I don't have any really good rationale for this, except stupid ones: Shobhit called out sick yesterday, and he wanted a Social Review point. That actually wasn't what drove it, though; we both just wanted to get the fuck outside for a few minutes. I think it was more of a case of cabin fever than anything. Pandemic "shutdowns" were one thing, not even being able to leave the house at all is another.
That said, to be fair, I did go outside briefly on both Saturday and Friday for other reasons. But I'll get to that momentarily.
Shobhit and I did not walk downtown as originally discussed. We stayed on mostly level ground, and just walked north up to Volunteer Park and back. That's a roughly two-mile walk, round trip, including a bit of walking around in the park. Stunningly, we actually passed people having picnics there, and even a few guys jogging—without even a mask on, so their heavier breathing would be really sucking in the smoke. And it did look very much like a heavy fog. But instead of fog, it was literally wildfire smoke.
On our way up there, Shobhit also wanted to stop in at the 7-Eleven to scan his lottery tickets. I suppose that was also one of his motivations for getting out. He tried to buy new ones and the machine wouldn't take it, so he'll have to try scanning at another place in the next few days I guess.
And, okay, we technically shouldn't have been outside. We're all choking on this shit no matter what, aren't we? They keep promising us a change in the weather in a few days, but a few days keeps moving another day or two further away.
On Saturday, I actually did leave the condo for a little while—but not so much for a walk. Well, aside from having to walk the five blocks north to catch the #8 westbound from the Safeway at 15th & John, and then the few blocks from the stop at 1st & Denny. I walked through the 3101 Western building that is across the street from my office, walking around to the side door that goes into that building's parking garage, that level being where the skywalk across Elliott Avenue meets on the other side on the third floor of 3131 Elliott Ave, where the PCC office is on the fifth floor.
This has long been a very frequent route of mine, whenever I have taken the #8 to work; it felt a lot like a sort of "throwback to old times" doing it this time, as it had been months since I went that way—in the midst of the pandemic, I have avoided public transit whenever possible. The last time I remember taking the bus, too many people had gotten on not wearing masks and it freaked me out. Well, I think people are a lot more used to masks now, and it was midmorning on a Saturday for this bus ride, so there were only like six or seven other people on this articulated bus—they all had masks on, and distancing was a lot easier. I only rode the bus this time to avoid having to walk an entire fucking hour in the smoke (and then another hour back); I'm sure as shit not riding my bike in this crap.
Besides, I had my library book and it gave me some time to read.
I was back by around noon, and I kind of putzed around while Shobhit was at work, until 3:00 rolled around, and Laney and I got back on Skype to watch the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg movie Sister Act together on Disney+. I would have loved to make it a double feature with Sister Act 2, but for some reason even though she has done double features in the Braeburn Condos theater, she won't do a double feature virtually. In any case, neither of us had watched the movie in ages, it was great fun, and a nice way to spend the afternoon.
Very soon after that, I actually rented Never Rarely Sometimes Always for six bucks on Amazon Prime, as this weekend's movie to watch for review. It was excellent, the best movie I have watched so far in 2020, and I gave it a solid A, the only one I've given so far this year (out of barely more than twenty movies I've reviewed so far in 2020, but whatever). I was finished with the review minutes before Shobhit got home from work and we spent some time watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Hulu.
Laney and I had our monthly Happy Hour on Friday evening, and we were going to meet at Volunteer Park in person. She was even going to insist on doing it even with the air quality at "Moderate," saying she would drive to the park and wear her N95 mask except when eating or drinking, but I wasn't sure that was even the best idea, particularly for her sake. Then that massive smoke cloud business happened, the air stayed strictly "Unhealthy" or "Very Unhealthy" pretty much all weekend, including Friday, and so we reverted back to Skype for a virtual Happy Hour.
We still bumped the park idea for the next Friday. Once again, though, that is air-quality depending, and we’ll bump it yet another week if we have to. If the smoke doesn't improve dramatically by then, I fear the bike ride Dad and I had planned for the 19th will wind up canceled after all as well.
Anyway, I still did go outside on Friday because I can't pass up this amazing deal being offered on Fridays at Whole Foods: their cheese pizzas made to order, usually costing $16, on sale for $6. I can't not get that! So, just like last week, I got two pizzas. Unlike last week though, I ordered them on the phone first, and then they were there waiting for me to pick up after I walked down Madison Street to the Whole Foods on Broadway to get them. I had to carry them walking all the way back. I was a little concerned earlier in the week about how I would deal with getting them home and then to Volunteer Park by 5:30, but that turned out to be moot; in the end Laney and I decided to get on Skype shortly after 5:00 (as soon as I was back home and could call her) because while both she and Jessica are at her home, Laney needed to be able to get off by 6:45. Jessica gets up super early now that she's got a job with the Washington State Ferries, and she's sleeping in Laney's living room and needs quiet.
So that's another reason I look forward to when we can finally do Happy Hour outside again (god willing, in actually fresh air): Laney can hang out for a lot longer. Cutting it kind of short on Friday was made up for to a degree, though, since we just got right back onto Skype again Saturday afternoon to watch the movie. So it wasn't so bad, and even with this damnedable smoke choking the entirety of the west coast, I had to admit I had a relatively nice weekend.
[posted 12:47 pm]