jmb blog

Crawl Space

Have you been in your crawl space lately?

Was the radon blocking material clean?

Were all the pipes wrapped?

Spider webs?

Why am I talking about crawl spaces?

It is winter – even in the Pacific Northwest. Granted it’s not like where the center of the country is blasted with cold from Canada, or where lake effect drops feet of snow overnight. What does winter have to do with crawl spaces? No, I’m not going to get into the conversation about plugging the vents or not plugging them.

Winter keeps most, many, or some of us inside. What is inside other than a good book or a hobby like this activity seems to be?

TV! And you know what supports antenna TV. Commercials! What do they have to do with crawl spaces?

One starts with something like, “Buggs, mold, moisture, dry rot … where you can’t see.” Then it shows men in clean uniforms with clearance over their heads rolling out a vapor/radon barrier in a well-lighted clean I say alleged. crawl space. Then the brag about being able to make any crawl space look like the one shown.

That commercial sparked memories of all or most of the crawl spaces where I had to work or find wires or pipes. Even the one new house we owned had just enough space above the ground to crawl using my scapulas or elbows to get a grip on the surface for propulsion. Where was the problem needing analysis or repair?

At the opposite end of the access opening, of course.

Do I believe the crawl space depicted in the commercial is common?

No!

Would I go into my crawl space again?

No!
Even ‘I can do it myself’ people my age should stay out of crawl spaces and off of their roof.1Cost of shingle repair $1000; cost of tibia repair after insurance $2000.

I Resolve

I‘m not sure where the idea of making New Years Resolutions and I certainly do not feel like researching the topic.

The following bits are adapted from bits written by people other than me.

Someone said, or wrote, “My goal for 2016 was to lose ten pounds. That New Year’s Day, I ate salad for dinner! Mostly croutons & tomatoes. Really just one big, round crouton covered with tomato sauce. And cheese. FINE, it was a pizza. I ate a pizza. At the end of 2016, I still had fifteen to go.”
I feel sure some might say the same at the end of 2026, but I and others have a year to prove me wrong.

I also read:

I just did a week’s worth of cardio after walking into a spider web.

I don’t mean to brag but… I finished my 14-day diet in 3 hours and 20 minutes.

Kids today don’t know how easy they have it. When I was young, I had to walk 9 feet through shag carpet to change the TV channel.
What does that have to do with resolutions?

Remember back when we were kids and every time it was below zero outside they closed school? Me neither.
Also, what does that have to do with resolutions?

I love being almost ninety. I learn something new every day and forget five others, but I forgot where I was going with this.
PS: Sunday, March 8, 2026, begins Daylight Saving Time. Don’t forget to set your bathroom scale back ten pounds on Saturday night.

If you’ve read this content before, thanks for remembering. If not, I hope you find it interesting.

Another China Book

Some time ago, I mentioned re-reading
Bill Lascher’s Eve of a Hundred Midnights
The China Mirage by James Bradley
and
Theodore H. White and Annalee Jacoby’s Thunder out of China.

I just read another ‘China’ book:
Ilona Ralf Sues’ Shark’s Fins and Millet published by Little, Brown and Company in 1944.
The title implies two extremes of Chinese life in the late 1930s. Shark’s fins were Chinese delicacies enjoyed by the rich and powerful and millet was the food of the hungry masses.

The Polish author who was fluent in nonnative languages Russian, German, French, English, and Chinese starts her personal story by telling of trying to influence the League of Nations to make more efficient and more honest efforts to reduce the opium traffic. She tells of becoming disgusted with evasion, hypocrisy, and appeasement before deciding to travel to China to make the same efforts at the source of the problem. During the years 1936 through 1939 she asks clumsy questions, gathered information, and formed opinions.

In the process she worked as an aide to the Australian William Henry Donald who was a longtime advisor to Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. She organized publicity, delivered propaganda addresses in French and English on the radio, and served as a censor.

She finds similarities to fascism in the Kuomintang’s1 The Kuomintang was a major political party in the Republic of China and the sole ruling party of the country during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China. It relocated to Taiwan and ruled under martial law until 1987. corruption, reaction, militarism, and anti-education policies.

The author believed China had no chance of becoming one under the one-party, Kuomintang. She observes that the Generalissimo is cold, aloof, proud, cut off from the people, too easily influenced by advisors. Sues says, “The amazing truth dawned upon me: Donald was re-enacting Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’ in China, with the world for a setting, Madame as Eliza, and himself as Professor Higgins.” Madame Chiang “knew as much of democracy as she could see by looking out of the windows of Wellesley College.” But, inspired by Donald, she fought for it, egoistically, arrogantly, temperamentally, determinedly.”

Sues develops admiration for the Chinese Communists and their achievements both in war and civil administration. Her experiences among them convinced her that “notwithstanding all statements to the contrary, the Chinese people were ripe for democracy.”

Because Shark’s Fins and Millet fills in details not given in Eve of a Hundred Midnights, The China Mirage, and Thunder out of China, it completed, at least for me, the picture of those years in China and those year’s impact on the conditions today.