Well, here we are at another year milestone for the Cap’n Bob & the Damsel Blog. Thirteen years ago in September, we began posting about our Perspectives on Life and Politics. I’m not sure about the exact date we started, since some early posts were lost, but the first day of fall should be close enough.

We started this back in 2005 prior to retirement. I seemed to have a lot more time to blog back then before becoming ‘busy’ in the after work life.

We might have slowed down in posting, but the world and it’s myriad of fake news, political asshattery, and steady stream Constitutional abuse has not. We may not post often about those things, but we notice and are otherwise politically active behind the scenes.

We will continue posting when we feel the need for it and because The Wandering Minstrel is now permanently offline, all the posts about classics, firearms, notions and otherwise will be posted here, probably resulting in more activity on this site. Stay tuned for the next thirteen years.

Last evening at dusk, I was in the courtyard photographing the sunset colors. I turned around toward the Red Bird of Paradise shrubs and saw several hummingbird moths browsing the flowers. I got the close-up above of one of the moths.

Hummingbird moths are actually an entire family of moths called Sphinx Moths. Family Sphingidae (Sphinx Moths, Hawkmoths) contains a very large number of related sub-families and species.

From the Butterflies and Moths of North America website:

The Sphingidae belong to the Superfamily Sphingoidea. Members of this family are commonly called “hummingbird,” “sphinx,” or “hawk” moths, and some can be mistaken for hummingbirds. Most are medium to large moths, with heavy bodies; wingspread reaches 5 inches or more in some species. The Sphingidae are strong and fast fliers, with a rapid wingbeat. Most species in the group are active at dusk, and most feed much like hummingbirds, hovering in front of a flower and sipping nectar through the extended proboscis. The proboscis rolls up when not in use. Some species lack scales on large portions of their wings, resulting in transparent or clear wings. In most species, the larval stage is called a “hornworm” because the caterpillar’s posterior end has a harmless hook or hornlike appendage protruding upward. Unfortunately, the caterpillar of some species can be very destructive to agricultural crops and ornamental plantings

Click on the image to enlarge.

Our eldest great grandchild, Alex, had his fourth birthday today. We sent him a birthday package via USPS and our granddaughter took these pictures of him opening his gifts. They live in Northern California.

He is at an age where he understands the concepts of birthday and who sent him presents. His mother says he really liked our presents.

The gifts were a Fire Tablet and Headphones. The interactive nature of the tablet should help him learn things as well as him playing games on it.

We have three great grandchildren now. Alex, his little brother, Mikey, and Maci, our great granddaughter whose mother is the second eldest of out three grandchildren. Maci will be two in April and Mikey celebrates his first birthday in November.

Our grandson, Jerry, just turned three in August. Jerry also got a Fire Tablet and Headphones. We were able to give Jerry his gifts in person, since his parents visited us here in Arizona in August.

During an afternoon walk, I noticed a small palo verde tree growing on the shoulder of the road out front. I made a mental note to remove the tree from that location due to proximity to road traffic. In a couple of years it would likely have grown out into the roadway.

In discussions with Damsel, we decided to relocate the tiny tree to our rock and cactus garden on the west side away from the RV drive. If the little tree survives the transplant, we will be able to prune it into a nice addition to the garden. It can be made to look like an attractive tree, like so many in Arizona xeriscapes managed by homeowners and landscapers.

I took my spade and carefully loosened the dirt around the little tree, trying to preserve most of the roots. I dug a hole in the west garden and lowered the tree into it. I brushed the soil from the hole over the roots and the lower part of the trunk. We doused it with a gallon of water, hoping that would ease the shock to the transplanted tree.

The two images above are the before and after. Click on either image to enlarge.

I have a new acquisition to my T-Shirt collection. The words and images on the back of it say it all from my perspective. And, it’s true that I was born in July. Click on the image to enlarge.

I found it in an ad on the FecesBook™ website and Damsel said I NEEDED to get it. So I did. It was a little spendy, but it is now mine to be worn on whatever occasions for which it may be suitable. I’m not trying to pick a fight, but won’t back down from one either.

Most of the time I am not actually grumpy, but that mood gets set into motion when really stupid people do stupid stuff. It could be in traffic, in the supermarket aisle, or practically anywhere else. As we have said in the past, “STUPID SHOULD HURT.”

Image courtesy of The Damsel.

This is the seventeenth anniversary of the Islamic Terrorist Attacks on America. We should Never Forget those events.

On that morning, I was in the bathroom getting ready for work. I had the radio on tuned into the local news radio station when I heard about the second attack on the World Trade Center. I woke Damsel up to tell her about the attacks and that I would be staying home to telecommute rather than drive to work. We both watched the terrible events unfold on televised news channels. We were both sad and enraged that this had occurred.

In the aftermath, American flags started to show up everywhere around the country. Patriotism was never more prevalent at that time than any time I can remember in my life. In that same spirit, my employer (TRW at the time), issued badges to all employees so we could display our pride in America during the recovery from the attacks.

American pride still exists, although diminished by time-induced apathy. On this day, we should NEVER FORGET what happened as well as using this Patriots Day to renew our pride in America.

Hurricane Florence (upper left of center in the GOES EAST animation above) is headed directly for the East Coast of the United States, probably making landfall in the Carolinas. The other two cyclones southeast of Florence are Hurricane Isaac, likely to be a problem when it strikes the Lesser Antilles, and Helene, which is forecast to drift northward over the open Atlantic and dissipate.

Florence will likely be the worst disaster to hit the Carolinas and Virginia in decades. It is forecast to make landfall as a category 5 hurricane and will be moving slow, thus prolonging the wind, rainfall and flooding. Recovery is going to be the most expensive in history for that area of the country.

Before, during and after, the alarmist Greenbats will begin their litany of misguided blame of man-made climate change. This is always predictable because of them never letting a crisis go to waste.

Pioneer meteorologist and extraordinary weather forecaster Joe Bastardi of Weatherbell Analytics penned an article Hurricane Florence: How We Got Here. These are some of the remarks he made in the article:

If I am right, this will be the most costly disaster for the Carolinas and Virginias on record. In addition, given our winter forecast, we expect the core of the cold and snow, relative to average, to be near these same areas, which for them means this could very well be the most extreme six-month period on record. A hurricane as strong as Hugo or Hazel, flooding rains due to Florence’s slow movement, the possibility of an exceptional winter — you can’t get much more extreme than that.

. . .

The 2018 Climate Ambulance Chaser Hurricane Blamefest is underway. Hopefully, if you have been following along with, you can see that this threat was a long time coming and has perfectly natural explanations. The setup for this started quite a while ago, and so I will keep clients updated and respond when called upon — and also sit back as the noise and fury hit a deafening pitch this week.

But remember the bottom line: Florence was predicted in advance, and the misery this is going to cause should be front and center. Hopefully, the response is ready to meet the challenge, which for the Carolinas and Virginias is liable to be the costliest on record when the flooding is factored in.

Joe has an excellent book he has written called The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations You Won’t Hear From Al Gore–And Others. Although I haven’t read the book yet (I plan to soon), I am sure it calls out the Greenbats for what they are - LIARS!