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Tag: Independence Day

  • Redwood, December 6th, 2025

    Too drained to work on long posts, I’d like to comment that purple magnolias have began to bloom, as have fruit trees (of plum, cherry, etc. variety – nispero blooms I have seen weeks ago, and citruses seem to flower year around.) Maybe I’ll post a photo or two, but here is a gif of sunlight flickering against redwood trunk, December 06th, 2025.

    December 6th is the Finnish Independence Day, though they have amended their constitution so that they are members of EU.

    Moreover, soon after the war in Ukraine flared up in 2022, and Finland also joined NATO. I don’t know what the current stance of the Finnish government is, but lately the Finnish media seemed to be on Denmark’s side against USA over Greenland despite NATO (US) having full use of Finnish military bases, at least as far as I could tell. The two officers Finland sent to Greenland returned back, mission over. Finnish news feeds are back to Russia and Ukraine, though recent headlines are mentioning possible peace negotiations. Hopefully, there will be peace soon, though I would not quite optimistic yet.

    What may have motivated the peace negotiations is the parlous shape of Western economies, meaning our ability to finance wars is becoming limited. I would prefer a peace treaty over total economic collapse as a method for ending that dreadful war, though.

  • Happy July 4th, 2025

    Or Treason Day, if you happen to live in UK. In recent years, I have been watching the fascinating news from that side of Atlantic with increasing horror. Sure makes me glad I am a US citizen, not a subject to the whimsies of Prime Minister Starmer. For the past couple of visits to Europe, I even have specified to my travel agent: no stops in UK.

    Why? When Soviet Union was a thing, if you traveled there for cheap vodka (vodka tourism) and other cultural immersion, you would only be charged for drunken and disorderly, such as might happen. Obviously, potential troublemakers would have been screened during visa application, but even people caught inside Soviet Union for the heinous crime of smuggling Bibles were sentenced merely for what they were doing in Soviet Union. Or so I think. However, according to an Internet source, officials in Starmer’s UK have stated that folks traveling to UK are subject to prosecution for doubleplus ungood on-line speech even typed outside the UK borders, even if they are not UK citizens. I think such dictatorships are to be avoided, especially when they have gone clearly bonkers. I love and I am grateful for my First Amendment rights, and this is one of the reasons I am happy this Independence Day.

    I have bought a steak and cherries, to be eaten soon, some canned fish for future, and had an Asian/Pacific Islander style BBQ beef minimeal with teriyaki sauce for breakfast.

    Big white magnolias are in bloom, and I have tried to get a nice photo of them for days, but that has been difficult. Many of the trees are very big and the flowers tend to be in the upper branches, either too small for my cell phone zoom or obscured by leaves and branches. Or the flowers are not otherwise accessible to photography. When I see a magnolia bud at nice, near to eye level, getting back in time before it has bloomed and is wilting is tricky, apparently the blossoms open and are done at a quick rate.

    Here are a couple of magnolia flowers I photographed with my cell phone today.

    One of these days, I should make more jigsaw puzzles.