8/24/2026

 Sunday, August 23, 2026

1903 Sixth Zionist Congress: Theodor Herzl declared a Jewish state

1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact and secretly divided Poland between themselves, setting the stage for World War II

1943 Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history, ends after 50 days as the Soviet Union defeats Germany; over 10,000 tanks take part, and nearly 250,000 combatants are killed

1946 Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constituted the German state of Schleswig-Holstein

1958 People's Republic of China resumed bombardment of the Quemoy and Matsu islands in the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis

1989 Two million people formed a human chain across Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania in a peaceful pro-independence demonstration against Soviet occupation

2005 Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas and later became a Category 5 hurricane

2020  Black man Jacob Blake was shot in the back by police in front of his children in Kenosha, prompting violent protests

2022 Two men were found guilty of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer 

In bed at 9:15, up at 5:40; 0600 203.2 120/75/63 116; 58/74/58, mostly sunny today.

Morning meds at 8:50 a.m.  Entresto heart meds at 6:35 a.m. and p.m.

I started the day visited by 3 wild turkey hens and their 16 youngsters on our front lawn,  a sight that always gives me a boost.  There are only one hen with about 5 chicks, or poults, or juveniles under our bird feeders; the rest are spread across the lawn, heading north.  I've learned that the youngsters are called poults for their first 4 or 5 weeks of life, when they become "jakes" and "jennies"  until they reach maturity, or hens and toms.  Our youngsters are getting pretty big, so I could only guess their age, but they still hang out with their mother hens, so I'm guessing they are still poults, but wow, they grow fast.  Once those visitors were gone, I saw a bit of a tiff under the feeders between a youngish bunny and a grey squirrel.  The bunny is eating whatever seeds the turkeys left, plus some dew-wet grass, and the squirrel got too close.  I would have thought the squirrel would chase away the bunny, but it was the other way around.  Who knew?  Meanwhile, life goes on as usual for our airborne visitors.  This morning, I need to replace the remnant of suet cake, which is still providing some morning sustenance to a red-bellied woodpecker, and to add a couple of mealworm seedcakes to the other feeding stations.  I'm surprised at how popular those seed cakes are.  They don't last long.

Yuma, Phoenix, Tucson, and Water.  My sister and her family lived for decades in the western suburbs of Phoenix.  My niece and nephew still live there.  Our good friends, David Lowe and his wife, Pip Powell Lowe, moved a couple of years ago to a new development north of Tucson.  In 1964-65, Anne and I lived for 14 months in Yuma, in the southwest corner of the state on the border with California, just a few miles from the Mexican border, on the banks of the Colorado River.  I should say, on the banks of the Colorado Puddles, because that's what the river was when we lived there, a series of puddles.  By the time the river reaches Yuma, almost all of its water has been drained by upriver users in California, Nevada, and Arizona (the Lower Basin) and in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and even Wyoming (the Upper Basin). When we lived there, Yuma had a population of about 30,000, and 60,000 in the big county.  Today, the city's population is 106, 923.  The county's current population is just under 225,000.  The water to take care of the city's municipal needs and the county's agricultural needs comes from the reservoir behind the Imperial Dam, 20 miles north of the city.  The water that gets to that reservoir is what's left after satisfying the needs of upriver users in the Lower and Upper Colorado Basins, including Las Vegas, NV, Phoenix, and Tucson.  Phoenix and Tucson divert their water from Lake Havasu behind the Parker Dam, 150 miles north of Yuma, and Las Vegas from Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam.

I got into all this because of a story in this morning's New York Times about America’s Desert Metropolis Is on the Short List to Lose Water, that metropolis being Phoenix. More statistics: in the mid-1960s, the Phoenix metropolitan area had roughly 800,000–850,000 people. The Census Bureau estimated the Phoenix metropolitan population at 842,000 in 1966, up from 663,510 in 1960. Today, the Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler metropolitan area has about 5.23 million people. The latest Census Bureau estimate is 5,228,938 as of July 1, 2025.  That's an increase of about 4.4 million people, or more than six times the metropolitan population I encountered in the mid-1960s.  Phoenix is still growing rapidly, Tucson at a much slower pace.  Their governments still encourage population and economic growth, notwithstanding their water supply challenges, and I've long wondered, WHY?  Isn't this insane???  The issues are complicated, and the governments assure their residents that they have adequate plans to meet the water needs of the communities, even with the planned growth, but this old coot is skeptical.  Let's see how the communities do in response to the planned federal cutback in Colorado River supplies.  From today's story in the New York Times:

With the seven states that rely on the Colorado River deadlocked over how to split its diminishing supply, the Trump administration is pushing its own plan to divide the water. The three downriver states — Arizona, California and Nevada — would most likely shoulder the most pain, but no single user stands to lose more than the Central Arizona Project.

Short-term reductions, announced by the federal government on Friday, will cost Arizona roughly one-third of its share of river water over the next two years. But beyond that, a range of cutbacks remain possible.

Under the most severe outcome, the system would be cut off entirely during the driest years, setting off a social and economic meltdown Arizonans shudder to even imagine.

“They are threatening to shut down the Southwest,” said Brenda Burman, the project’s general manager. “It’s not possible to picture it.”

How long before the Southwest states look to the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes for water???? 

More old age problems.  I'm wondering whether I may have agreed to the Honor Flight too soon.  I'm wondering about my bowels and bladder, i.e., bathroom needs.  It's a 15-hour day, with about 4 on the aircraft and 11 in D.C.  Is this a reckless undertaking for me?  Bathroom facilities at the Mall?  Arlington?

The beer garden and picnic aria overlooking Little Cedar Lake, between the little sand beach area and the piers and boar launch area.

A ride in the country.  I took a ride in the country north of Milwaukee County this early afternoon, leaving with no particular destination in mind, but ending up at Little Cedar Lake in Washington County, 30 miles northwest of Bayside.  It would take me a good 45 minutes to get there by car, folloing the most direct route, but I took more than an hour via country roads.  I realized as I drove those roads that this end-of-summer period is southeast Wisconsin's lushest season, unbelievably green, farm fields full of mature crops, mostly corn and soybeans, and roadsides almost overgrown.  So beautiful.  I happended upon Hidden Valley Drive in the Town of Cedarburg, 4 to 5 miles northwest of the City of Cedarburg, lined with new, very expensive, large, modern homes.  It's just south of Hidden Valley Lake which shows up on maps but isn't visible from the roads nearest it.  The maps also don't show into into roads into it, a mystery lake.  While on Hidden Valley Drive, a saw a guy driving a motorcycle while standing fully erect and no hands on the handlebars and no helmet on his head.  I wondered what he war trying to prove.  I stopped at Little Cedar to pee in the public restroom which overlloks the beer garden/picnic area, which at which nearly all the tables were occupied.  Indeedm most of the parking lots in what is now Ackerman Park were full.  When I first started coming to Little Cedar Lake to fish with Doug Wenger or with my kids, the land belong to Farmer Ackerman, who lived across Highway Z.  We would stop in his house to pay the boat launching fee he charged for his lake access, $3 if I remember correctly.  Now there is no separate fee for launching a boat onto the lake, but the land is owned by Washington County which calls it Ackerman Park and charged a $7 daily entrance fee.  I have so many memories of visits to Little Cedar with doug Wenger, my kids, and with my grandson Peter.  Little Cedar is where Peter caught his first fist, a little perch maybe 4 inches long.  The photo on my Facebook page is of Peter, me, and that little perch, taken right after the historic catch.  My last outing on my beloved Lund Mr. Pike 16 foot fishing boat was at Little Cedar with Sarah on a belated Father's Day outing.  My recollection of that outing was me using oversized hooks because I didn't want to catch any of the abundant bluegills in the lake, and of Sarah catching a bluegill with every casting of a baited hook.  I wondered whether she even needed to bait her hooks.  Today I saw two guys in a jon boat fishing the week patch at the south end of the lake and 4 boys fishing off the pier where Peter caught his perch.  On the way home, I drove up to West Bend and along Rustic Raod 52, on Paradise Drive, a favorite drive of mine for the last 25 years since we lived in the Town of Saukville, and Maple Drive, north of Grafton, between Cedar Sauk and Cedar Creek Roads.  Memories, memories, an old man's sustenance.

Geri and I had a long , good schmooze about selling our house and buying a big bi-level condo down the street from us.  More to say about that as developments warrent.