11. May. 2011 Hanging out at the ophthalmologist’s office

            From 10 May 2011:

            Effective this Tuesday afternoon and evening from 320 PM until
1100 PM EDT.

Hail to 3.5 inches in diameter... thunderstorm wind gusts to 70
mph... and dangerous lightning are possible in these areas.

The Severe Thunderstorm Watch area is approximately along and 85
statute miles either side of a line from 40 miles northwest of
Bristol Tennessee to 25 miles east southeast of Myrtle Beach
South Carolina. For a complete depiction of the watch see the
associated watch outline update (wous64 kwns wou9).

Discussion... thunderstorms will increase both from the W-NW across
the Appalachians and nearer the coast as air mass has become
strongly unstable this afternoon. With 40-50 kt of deep layer
shear... coupled with steep mid level lapse rates... very large hail
will accompany many of the strongest storms including a few
super cells. Damaging winds will be associated with upscale
development later this afternoon of storms into short line segments
and clusters as they move sewd thru the watch.

Aviation... a few severe thunderstorms with hail surface and aloft
to 3.5 inches. Extreme turbulence and surface wind gusts to 60
knots. A few cumulonimbi with maximum tops to 500. Mean storm
motion vector 30025.

            1619 the local radar shows a line of storms reaching from middle Kentucky, into Virginia, and them into Tennessee.  The line is approaching Johnson City from the NNW.  Intensity for those cells I can monitor is far less than the last time I did this.

            2315 The line of thunderstorms I’ve been watching all evening has arrived.

There’s an odd configuration to the line, it’s doubled back on itself, turning from North-south orientation to east-west orientation with a marked bow appearance. 

The orientation is now NW > SE.  We’re getting 15 mph winds in the valley, heavy rain falling in short bursts backed up by lighter rain.  Extremely intense lightning suggestive of tornadic winds and, tornadic vortex signatures on radar returns. 
I’m going to be up for a while

            Dawn was a prolonged rumble of thunder at 0435.   The noise was followed immediately by the weather radio announcing a severe thunderstorm warning for North Carolina.  I staggered out to the living room and reset the broadcast alarm.  The actual alarm clock had another hour to go before sounding off. I made an attempt at going back to sleep but the thunderstorms that were active in Tennessee made that difficult.

            Gloria has an ophthalmology appointment this morning at 0930.  We drove in two Johnson City with several other errands to run after her appointment. 

            This is a large office that serves the city and surrounds.  The average age in the waiting room population seems to be middle 60s.  The waiting room is blessed with a television tuned to Fox News.      The tube-watching part of the patient/escort pool seems to be quite happy with the choice of audio-visual trash.  They watch the supposed news broadcast and nod as if agreeing with the flood of bullshit that emanates from the broadcast.

            Gloria sat down in the TV pit and immediately began making anti-Fox comments.  I responded in kind.  The faces of the people around us remained, for the most part, fixed toward the too-small television placed at too high a position to for anyone with a damaged neck to watch comfortably.  There are some flickers of disbelief as Gloria champions taxing the rich and abolishing corporate tax loopholes.  The age and dress of the patients combined with the type of medical office we are in tells me that most of these patients are Medicare patients. 

            They seem oblivious of the fact that their Congressional Rep, David Phillip Roe TN 1^st ® has recently voted along the teavangelist party line to abolish the patient-doctor privacy privilege in his desire to overturn Roe v. Wade.  Nor do they seem aware that he wants to abolish both Medicaid and Medicare.  I'd like to stand up on a chair and begin telling these assembled patients what they stand to lose.  But that would surely cause the office staff to call the local constabulary to remove me.  Most likely, it would also result in breach of peace or some similar charge being filed as well.

            The truly ugly part of this teavangelist plan can be seen in the fact that Rep. Roe is a retired OB/Gyn.  I've worked with OB/Gyns from his age group.  Most of them have their patients convinced that they have halos.  They don't allow any challenge to their authority.  They treat nursing and ancillary staff like indentured servants and refuse to believe that these other professionals often equal or exceed them in scope of knowledge beyond their own limited field of practice.  I've sat in on telephone conference calls while Roe used this condescending behavior to convince elderly women that the “Palin death panels” actually were to be enacted and that they would be, figuratively, set outside the town walls to die. 

            The level of Fox bullshit – anti-Obama smears in every new group of carefully scripted lies – is getting deeper as the wait lengthens.  The teavangelist pool keeps nodding as the lies follow each other.  The readers keep telling the world how another round of tax cuts for the wealthy will save the nation.  The amazing thing is that no one seems to question why these tax cuts failed to create new jobs for Americans when they happened in the Reagan and the Bush II administrations.  The lie is repeated endlessly, the people who claim to be opposed to “the educated elite” seem to have no problem with the wealthy elite.

            It has to do with the teavangelist's “pie in the sky.” promises that the evangelical and fundamentalist churches spout.  They never question the Congressional lies and they get to keep their tax-exempt status for another election cycle. 

            There are several children in the waiting area.  The office has cordoned off a section for children and patients with children.  The adults responsible for the children seem unwilling to keep them from leaving the cordoned area and running in the waiting area.  Looking at the aged patients in the designated paths, the consequences of a child/senior collision seem likely to result in falls and fractures. 

            Last night we were visited by severe thunderstorms.  These arrived after dark and delivered heavy rains and some small hail, backed up by intensive lightning.  They tracked in from the NW and carried some tornadic vortex signatures on the radar feeds.  No tornadoes were reported but over 100 reports of hail, over 20 reports of wind damage, and many power outages were.  Given the events of 27-28 April 2011, it was somewhat difficult not to associate last night’s storms with April's.

            Loki was in full DEW Line mode, pacing, panting, shivering, and trying to crawl into the smallest spaces she could find.  Her apprehension preceded the storms by about 15 minutes, but these were fast moving, rotating storms that grew more intense and increased in ground speed as they approached.  It would be easy to view her distress as funny behavior, and in some ways, it is.  But the poor dog is horribly upset and wants to hide in some barely accessible den-like space while simultaneously being comforted by both Gloria and me. 

            The warning expired at Midnight and, as if controlled by some switch on an atmospheric control board, so did the storm.  We avoided hunkering down in the bathroom although both of us did consider getting ready to move our go box and other storm necessities into the bathroom.   Tornadoes have always been a source of real anxiety for me; Even so, I'm dealing with the warnings better than I used to do so.  I didn't sit up until 0-dark-thirty watches expired as I’ve often done for days at a time.  When our last storm on radar left the area, I managed to get about 3 hours of sleep before the crack of dawn woke us up.  It may not be much, but it is an improvement.

            We arrived at 0915.   It is now 1055.  I've sat through nearly two hours of anti-Obama propaganda and rhetoric.  Now the thrust has shifted to the Navy's reversal of its position on same gender marriages being performed on Navy bases.  The Navy's reality-based decision to allow same-gender marriage has alarmed a large number of Senators who are waving the “defense of marriage act” about as if it were truly a means of eliminating gays and lesbians from the planet's population.  This is yet another example of teavangelist and Christian fundamentalists being allowed involvement in our government. 

            In some manner the quasi-legal transfer of civil authority to churches, allowing their agents to function as a coincidental agent of government has brought to power, people who have been willing and able to convince the mob that the legal union of two persons of the same gender in “marriage,” a religious concept will somehow degrade the “marriage” of heterosexual couples, upsetting the fabric of society. 

            The solution, short form, is to revoke the authority of all churches to convey legal rights in a marriage ceremony and to require that such legal unions, conveying powers of attorney, legal next-of-kin status, etc., be carried out by an agent of government.  Further, all such legal unions must be considered valid in all states and territories of this nation.

            1534 All errands completed other than the library.  It is closed today as a result of power loss caused by the storms last night.  The saleswoman at the produce stand where we stopped for another gallon of strawberries said they had several trees down along the river and that all the strawberry plants had been blown down and were leaning SW – the storm came from the NE last night.  Tonight may hold thunderstorms in the forecast.  I hope not!