"All the men in my family were bearded, and most of the women." - W.C. Fields

Do you see it?

According to the ABC affiliate in Phoenix 34,911 people were arrested in June for illegally crossing into the U.S. across our southern border. That's down from 40,334 in May. The article said numbers typically drop slightly in the summer months.
I was surprised the number was that high.

A friend posted something on Facebook that I thought was totally fake. Then I looked it up and found out it isn't. And that scares me.
First, here's a YouTube video of Mick Jagger and David Bowie doing "Dancing in the Streets."
Somebody took the sound track (music) out of the video and posted the results here.
How does an intelligent adult maintain any sense of self dignity doing this for a living?

I was a lousy science student in HS and took a no-brainer science course to fulfill my college degree requirements. But I'm pretty sure I remember that matter comes in three forms: gas, liquid, and solid. So I'm curious about "liquid natural gas."
Not curious enough to go wiki it to find out. Just seems like a pretty obvious oxymoron.

Pam took the Blazer into town today to do laundry and get a haircut. When she got home I asked her how she liked driving it. Among other things, "It doesn't accelerate as quickly as the Kia."
My wife the lead foot.
To be fair, it weighs half again what the Kia did. Nobody buys a 4WD Blazer for the acceleration.

I'm going to order a backup camera on Amazon. Several models that get good reviews are under $50 and this thing has an even more obstructed rear view than the Kia.

In other car news I bumped up Sally's timing from 10 degrees BTDC to 12 degrees. Yeah, I know that's "blah, blah, blah" for most of you but I'm hoping when I have a chance to take her out tomorrow she'll accelerate better and run smoother.
12 degrees BTDC sounds like a lot but it's actually what the manual calls for with an automatic transmission.

I got a bunch of other to-do list items done today including trimming out the new living room window. I'll paint tomorrow when the caulk is cured. That will wrap up the new wood stove project except for the county inspector who is coming Friday.

When we lived in rural west Michigan outside of Grand Rapids the Fourth of July was a big deal. The burbs of Hudsonville, Grandville, Jenison, and others all had their own parades and city fireworks events as soon as it was dark. Local businesses - one-off hardware stores, diners, and the like - had special sales, and streets were festooned with flags and banners.
Now that we live in deep blue Oregon I've not heard anything about any parades, I've seen very few flag displays, and a lot of municipal fireworks displays are being cancelled because of the fire danger.
So much for Norman Rockwell.

What bothers me most is that the extreme partisanship of this time seems to have overshadowed the patriotism of just a decade ago.
I am not at all inclined to the dangerous blurring of God and country that seems to characterize too much of American evangelicalism. But in carefully measured amounts loyalty to country binds a community together in what can be positive ways. We pull together for the common good. Except I'm not sure there's anything we have in common anymore.