Hot Here Today, Gone Cold Tomorrow

 Right now, my region of the country is under a heat dome. This isn't some alien technology designed to make humans submit to extraterrestrial supremacy, though it certainly sounds like that. Rather, this is a function of our current atmospheric situation, in which unusually (unseasonably) high temperatures and no chance for rain are locked in over us for a while, causing the mercury to soar and heat-related injuries and mortality to skyrocket. And yet, people are still going hiking.

This current heat dome event has been given a tentative end date, so there is some hope that it will soon degenerate and give us more reasonable summertime weather soon, but this June, which is ending in a few days, is now the hottest on record in our area. In the meantime, as if some sadistic deity is cranking up the planet’s thermostat, each day this week has gotten considerably warmer, to the point that, by ten in the evenings, well after sunset, it is still in the mid 80s (26-32°C). At this time of year, the sun rises (in our area) a few minutes after six in the morning and descends over the western horizon at twenty minutes to nine, meaning that, from dawn until dusk, the sun is up for about 14.5 hours, heating every surface to the egg-frying point. Old brick houses like ours absorb the heat and radiate it for several hours after full dark. Thank the gods for central air.

The cause of this heat dome is a huge high pressure area in the upper atmosphere that squishes the air beneath it, compressing everything like a big waffle iron in the sky. This particular heat dome event has stalled, failing to clear off in a respectful manner, and in the meantime, is ruining everything. During this weather event, too, the barometer remains high, so no rain and very few clouds impede the burning and sizzling of the sun. As the man said, “Yeah, but it's a dry heat.” This you can see by gazing up at skies that are, if nothing else, nearly Autumn blue and clear. By the time this dome disintegrates and moves east, the number of heat-related illnesses and deaths will be as unpleasantly high as the temperature. 

Events like this heat dome are caused by increasing amounts of carbon and methane in the atmosphere which disrupt the normal weather patterns. It’s not a matter of opinion, mine or anyone else’s. It is a scientific fact that has been tracked by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for decades. Those who are of the opinion that global heat indexes aren’t rising will cite the colder winters and worsening winter weather as evidence that the temperature on the surface isn’t increasing. After all, if things are getting progressively warmer, what is with these very cold winter events? It’s a question worth addressing.

A little more than six months ago (as the clock flies) we were preparing for Yule and I was baking a lot of cookies to bring to neighbors and friends. Temperatures were barely reaching above freezing during the brief daylight hours, and nighttime thermometers were struggling to capture the single digit chill. It was so cold that the water on top of our pool cover froze solid and a clay planter on our courtyard dining table shattered with a crack as I strode by, scaring me senseless. 

Our ears, noses and fingers grew numb between the house and the car or the car and the shops. Any time spent outside had to be carefully planned to make sure that enough layers were worn and all extremities were covered. Pipes burst around the block from us three times over that week. We stayed in as much as possible, kept the dogs on a short potty break schedule and tried like heck to keep our own pipes from bursting. It's hard to believe that this is the same house, sweltering and sticky, that, half a year ago, was shuddering with cold.

That event was called a polar vortex. During it, arctic air was forced down into our region by slow-moving high pressure in the troposphere allowing the chilled weather common in those latitudes above the arctic circle to waft down across our temperate region, increasing cold-related illnesses and freezing deaths. It was bone cold and that cold was a result of the shenanigans of a weather pattern called La Niña.

You’ve no doubt heard of this sibling to El Niño, who first got a lot of attention during the late 1990s when bizarre weather patterns first took national and international notice. We’re having a La Niña year and that does not bode well for those of us who live in the eastern US. This is mainly because “The Girl” causes a shift in the polar jet stream, a river of air currents that flows west to east from Alaska down across the United States in a large undulating curl, to slide further northward. La Niña is caused by warm waters off the western coasts of the Americas near the equator getting blown toward Asia by the trade winds there. As the warm sea water moves westward, cooler water from deeper in the Pacific Ocean rises to the surface pushing the Jet Stream further north. This causes a dryer, hotter summer in our region, but it also means a high pressure area can more easily stall right over our house because there is nothing to push it out to sea.

The current (and hopefully soon-to-be dissipating) heat dome is further exacerbated by the fact that, as high pressure systems move over the area, they now tend to stall, causing giant anvils of heat to settle over our heads. When this happened in 2021 in the Pacific Northwest, it caused summer temperatures to spike to thirty degrees above the average of their three hottest months. That heat dome killed many people and caused mischief to the power grid and at hospitals before it broke up. Today, you’ll notice that there is some cloud cover, which will help to deflect the sunlight and reflect it back into space, which may help to cool things a bit.

A heat dome over us means that, as the hot air heats the Atlantic Ocean, that body of water becomes far more fertile for hurricanes. Also, the hotter the seas, the stronger the trade winds, which blow that hot water toward Asia, which starts the whole process over again. The seas are hotter because the atmosphere is hotter. The whole atmospheric situation has become a kind of perpetual motion machine.

When a polar vortex occurs in winter, people go outside and say, “How can the atmosphere be getting warmer if it is this cold? Global warming is a hoax!” This not only betrays a total lack of even basic seventh grade science, but it also shows that people will cling to any false data in order to prove their fantasies are right. But, a polar vortex is also caused by too much warm air, in this case, up in the troposphere. As it rises toward the North Pole, it unsettles the vast spinning mass of frozen air there. The warm air causes the polar air system to wobble, and the resulting unsettled behavior causes freezing air to swell down into the middle latitudes. Imagine squeezing a water balloon; as your fingers (the hot air) close, the balloon expands and distends. This is what initiates a polar vortex in our region. In both cases, these events are caused by unusual heating of the atmosphere. 

It’s not all bad news, though. Our planet has a built-in system that will rebalance the ecological shifts caused by too much carbon and methane in the air. Okay, it’s true that either of them is a cataclysm on a mass scale that will likely devastate human populations and disrupt agricultural production and power grids. But at least things won’t be so damned hot, anymore.

Eventually, enough particles will enter into the atmosphere, either from pollution or from extreme volcanic activity (or both) that little or no sunlight will make it to the surface of the planet (this could also be caused by a nuclear winter, but what are the chances of that?). The heat trapped within will soon dissipate, and the surface temperature will drop. Seawater will begin to freeze and the ice sheets and glaciers will grow and spread, moving south and causing the temperate parts of the planet to become considerably colder. The bigger the ice sheets, the more reflective the surface of the planet becomes, shooting solar energy back into space. Eventually, the seasons will morph into a longer and longer winter, until glaciers and frost will move far enough south to freeze big rivers and extend the ice sheets well out into maritime waters. When that happens, the next ice age will have started.

You may scoff, because we’ve already had one ice age and we’re done, right? Actually, we’re in what is called an interglacial period, when the warm up between ice ages forces the glaciers back again. The earth has had several ice ages in its very long (to us) life, but the most recent likely began around 20,000 years ago and ended just 11,000 years ago. They occur with enough regularity on their own to be of concern to future generations (if we survive the consequences of our planet’s current surface turmoil) but of even more concern if, by pumping thousands of cubic feet per person of particulates into the atmosphere, we could actually be speeding the coming ice age along its way right now.

Sooner or later, the earth will become basically uninhabitable. Right now, with the scalding air weighing on our sunburned necks, it feels like we’re going to be scorched to death, but the fact is, humanity is having an unhappy impact on our only safe and true home. Sooner or later, we’ll have to face the consequences of our greed and addiction to fossil fuels. However, if history is anything to go by, we’ll keep on covering our eyes and refusing to admit that our pants and our lives are on fire.

As part of the plan in place should the former president be re-elected is an initiative to dismantle organizations that track weather, like NOAA, because they ‘promote global warming lies’. If this happens, we will no longer have the ability to track the very obvious disturbances in the weather, nor will we be able to make a scientific case to reduce carbon output. All of this is funded, of course, by fossil fuel and petrochemical companies that pump campaign money to candidates that allow them to keep their monopoly on coal, oil and gas. Most, if not all of the arguments against global warming or claiming that it is a lie come from these same sources. We have the opportunity to make up our own minds in the matter, and the evidence seems to prove that, if nothing else, things are changing and not for the better. This may be the hottest summer on record for us, but it may actually be the coolest summer from now on, if the trends continue. And it looks like they will.

 Now I have to water our garden. Again.

Happy Solstice and Announcements

 Hello, Devoted Readers!

Happy Midsummer! The glorious Summer Solstice is upon us! So is the Heat Dome, which promises to bring not only unseasonable heat to our region, but also, unearthly. Quite rare this early in the year, they are saying.

Anyway, in honor of the Solstice, I am skipping this week. I am also having some preventative maintenance done on my digestive tubes and so, I'll be a bit out of commission for the next day or two. 

Since half the year is done, at least by solar standards, I have some interesting and hopefully engaging topics drafted for the last half of 2024. Arthur Conan-Doyle's greatest novel, some questions about Wild West Work habits and finally, a little on the heat, because why not talk about the weather? It's what we do.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. See you in a week!

Brain Jog

Few of my childhood memories of school now remain as crystal clear as my gym class experience in fourth grade. I can remember some of the teachers and some of the kids, those faded halls and dingy classrooms, but the majority of the details have slipped into blurry, flashback quality reveries that only seem to become real again just before I fall asleep. Of all those teachers and kids, one came back to me recently, as I tried and failed to run for a second duration of three minutes during my morning exercise. I could suddenly hear shrieking across foggy and muddy fields as I tried to remain upright. “Run you maggot! Run you useless animal! Keep running! RUN!”  

My fourth grade gym teacher, Ms. Merrimack (name changed for historical reasons) was a stout hulk of a woman with a perpetual scowl and a sadistic love of running—at least for making kids run. It was obvious to me, even back then, that she had never run one step in her life except maybe toward a buffet or away from a sabertooth tiger. When other gym teachers at other schools were letting their kids stay inside because of frigid weather, Merrimack was having her miserable charges run in the frostbitten subzero January temperatures. Bruce Allen and Jerry Earhart both lost fingers that winter. We could never find Danny Harrigan again until the thaw. Some of the kids stumbled over a small pile of frozen snow in March and realized that it was Danny and dragged him to the nurse. He had fallen and froze solid and had been laying in the muddy grass, a solid kid-cicle, for most of the winter. It took three school nurses hours of consistently pouring warm water over him to revive him. Once he was partially free of the ice, he wept bitterly and asked to be excused from gym class. The next week, Danny was back running with the rest of us. He never lost a tint of pale blue around his lips and fingers.

Shannon Fredrick, my best friend back then, said that Merrimack was Schultz's twin sister from Hogan’s Heroes. From then on we called Ms. Merrimack ‘Schultz’. Her hair cut was even done in such a way as to resemble the M35 Stahlhelm worn by John Banner on the show. Unlike the character, though, who was bumbling and good-natured, Merrimack was a tyrannical teacher with no pity and no compassion. Children who fell and skinned their knees or who didn’t (or couldn’t) actually run in her class were made to make up the laps they missed even if they had to drag themselves hand over hand. One day, Schultz was having us run during a thunderstorm, and we were equally lashed and pelted by rain and hail. Three kids were taken to the nurse after being struck by lightning. Worse than any other time, though, was at the beginning and end of the year, when the days were hot and the humidity high. Kids fell left and right. It was more than a little like the Bataan death march.

One day at lunchtime, Shannon asked me what I thought Merrimack would have us do for gym class that day. It was sleeting, as I recall. I said in merciless imitation of Schultz, “I know nussink, except zat ve vill be runnink!” Shannon laughed so hard strawberry milk snorted from his nose. It was nevertheless true. We ran in gym class. We always ran. Other kids played kickball or did jumping jacks or had dodgeball tournaments. 

We ran. 

I was about nine years old, and I had a never ending supply of energy coursing through my youthful frame. Having Ms. Merrimack for gym meant that I hated running, but I could run and so, to keep her eyes off of me, I kept my head down and ran. It was horrible. My lungs burned, my legs ached. More than once I saw my short life flash before my eyes, but I kept running.

Ms. Merrimack merely stood with a stopwatch clutched in her claw, a sharp, screeching whistle clenched in her teeth and her stahlhelm haircut gleaming dully in the bleak winter daylight, waiting for us to complete four hundred laps around the playground. It was a long time ago, so I'm not perfectly clear, but one crisp spring day, I'm pretty sure I saw classmates fashioning a stretcher from pine boughs and their winter coats and carrying some of our fallen comrades off the field.

By the time I started my final year in elementary school, “Schultz” Merrimack had retired—she had to have been about ninety back then—and Shannon Frederick had also moved away. As a result of the endless laps, I had developed a skill for running that I didn't know I had. As I progressed from awkward nerdy kid in hand-me-downs to a gangly, nerdy pre-teen in hand-me-downs, I grew taller, and it became apparent that, if nothing else, I could sprint well. Mr. Huff, the middle school gym teacher, often asked me to go out for track once I reached the seventh grade, but my parents and The Lord had other plans for me. I spent the next few years in parochial school where running was forbidden except during gym class, when the school's bullies (teachers and students) had freedom to pursue students in the gymnasium to torture the nerdy kids.

By the time I got back to public school, I was too busy navigating the vicissitudes of puberty to care much about running. My parents wanted me to go out for the soccer team and I did and wound up sitting on the bench for all the games. I did run my skinny backside off during practices, though and I still marvel that I once could smoke Marlboro cigarettes and run five miles without getting winded back then.

After high school, running became something that I rarely did if I could help it. I could run, and run fast, but I didn't opt to do so. For a brief moment in my early thirties, before we moved the family to our current residence, I went through a period of trying to run, but I found it intolerable. Both the heat and the humidity exasperated my asthmatic nature too much by then.

I see people running, usually in the hottest part of the year, during the steamiest part of the day and ask myself what demon lashed their conscience to this utmost extremity of misery. Running is hard, tough on the joints and cardiopulmonary system, it burns calories rapidly, dehydrates and depletes essential chemicals from the body. Even just a very short run in hot weather can reduce an otherwise healthy human to a shriveled human raisin.

The act of running isn't an unusual thing in the animal kingdom. Almost all creatures can gallop or trot, but very few are entirely bipedal in their process. Even the great apes, like chimpanzees and gorillas can run at speed for short distances, but they almost always move with their arms as well. As the only fully bipedal primates, humans have developed over many long eons, a skillful way to use our legs to speedy advantage. Only ostriches, emus, roadrunners and other ground-dwelling birds are as keen runners as humans. Running uses a lot of energy and our bodies already require a lot of energy because of the size of our brains.

The problem is, however, almost all humans feel awareness of their running and the discomfort that it brings. Only people of exceptional physical ability, who are in mid-season shape, can run and run well for prolonged periods of time. To do so is to mentally able to overmaster the sheer horror of the act. Those people are actual runners, not those who are only desperate to try anything to be fit enough to wear a skimpy bathing suit.

I almost never see true runners out doing their chore-like exercise for all the world to see in the middle of the day. They run early or late, preferring to avoid other people's attention (unless they are participating in a marathon) and bypass the extreme temperatures of very cold or very hot, if they can help it. Running is painful and unpleasant and people look and feel terrible when they do it. It is a great workout, generally, if one can only devote time and effort to not minding, but it is not elegant or chic. Running is strictly utilitarian. We are borrowing a key survival behavior from a time when large predatory fauna roamed the countryside and molding it into an exercise.

I know all this not because I have done a bunch of research on running, but because, for several weeks, I have battled with myself on the topic. I have been feeling like running and the urge is powerful and a bit overpowering. As a result of this urge, I have been building up my tolerance for running, and I recently started a program of exercise to build myself up to running a 5K (3.1 miles) marathon before my next birthday in March 2025. 

Why would you do this to yourself, Dave, you might ask, and would be well within your rights to implore on behalf of my rational side. The fact is, I have become friends with a healthy lifestyle that isn't based on a fad diet or trendy exercise routine. I just feel good, generally, when I work toward a goal. I sleep better, have more energy, feel mentally well-balanced and am, if possible, a little more amiable. I was walking three miles every other day (9 miles a week) and started jogging short bursts here and there in my routine  just to hustle up the monotony, but also because I still could, which was an enjoyable realization. That was a most extraordinary feeling for me. The next time, I felt like running again! It made me feel almost buoyant.

Far be it from me to brag. I am struggling with this process. I am not progressing even as fast as the running program intends. I am laboring over expanding my time and it is hard work, but it is also rewarding. I have had to engage the use of a phone app that is helping me broaden my breathing and my running time and it is kicking my backside far harder than old Schultz ever did. I’m getting there, but this isn’t about a destination, so much as the journey. Upon reflection, I have discovered that, for me, it is less about the actual running and more about an internal battle of wills with myself. 

Somehow, I got a taste for the feeling of accomplishment that comes from pushing myself to do more and more challenging things and the main obstacle in my way is that voice that says, “Just lay in this morning, you’re tired, you need rest. To hell with all this running!” That voice is right twice a week, when I don’t go to the gym and I don’t run. On those days, primarily, I play my drums for about 45 minutes on my lunch break, in order to get the heart rate up. But on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays, with little variation, I have to talk down that voice, move toward my goal and devote myself to a higher mental discipline. To that end, I have summoned the memory of Schultz Merrimack.

Running, it turns out, is doable, at least on a treadmill with a horrid drill instructor of a ghostly gym teacher squawking at me. Even if I never manage to win a 5K, I’ll be able to run three miles three times a week. Will it make a difference? I doubt it. I’ll know that my buoyant and cheerful mood is due, in large part, to a small and quiet urge within me to push myself harder and work steadily toward a goal. What will that goal be once I have accomplished this one? That’s hardly the point. Half of the joy isn’t in the exercise, so much, as knowing that I’m challenging myself and learning my limits.

I don’t know if Merrimack still lives. I assume that if she is alive, it is because, like my great-aunt Etta who lived to be 104, Death is terrified of her and the infernal realms are afraid she'll lead a coup and assume power. I imagine her in her chair, by the treadmill, watching as her former student runs. Her face gleams with sadistic joy, her head surmounted by snow-white stahlhelm hair, clutching a battered stopwatch in one gnarled, claw-like hand. As I flag in my training, she mouths the words, “Run, you useless animal. Run, you maggot. Run!” At least something good came of her awful tutelage.

Light Up My Nights

 Light up My Nights

My house is bright at night. I have, by slow and patient effort, contrived to have every outdoor receptacle loaded with powerful smart bulbs that come on at dusk that illuminate the shadowy corners and blind spots all around our home until “dawn's early light”. I have often boasted about this, mainly because it is important to make sure that things are safe and there is an active deterrent in place against trespassers and evildoers. Years ago, one of our former neighbors proved to be one of these.

Compared to most houses around our neighborhood that are just dark all night, our house is lit up “from evening close to morning light” to quote Shelley. Some neighbors may have motion detecting lights that flash on and blind passersby causing untold thousands in potential personal injury lawsuits, but mostly, their residences are gloom-wrapped during the dark hours. Anyone so inclined could easily leap onto a porch or deck and pry into the house and be unseen in their burglarious chicanery. Such a thought freezes the Bare marrow. I would prefer keeping the house lit rather than allowing any ne'er do well even the suspicion that our residence is an open target. 

This is the primary reason that I keep our domicile lit, but the other reason is that we once had an ongoing battle with an old man who, by dint of his shortage of the milk of human kindness, felt as free upon my land as he did on his own. It eventually came to a head, but keeping the house lit helped.

The Bare's are good neighbors. We like to exchange treats at the holidays and help in crises. We are also disposed to understand that, when you live in close proximity to someone, there are bound to be eccentricities that both sides will have to navigate. It's just the way things are. We happened to move next to the most eccentric fellow there ever was, and little did we know it, but his reputation spanned all over our block and stretched back decades.

When we moved to our current home I hadn’t yet adopted this ‘bright house at night’ mentality, so our residence was often dark. This neighbor had already become a bit of a problem in the making even in just the short time we had been there. He has since shuffled off this mortal coil, but when we were newly moved in, this oldster proved himself a giant nuisance and part of the problem was that he just couldn’t seem to stay on his side of the property line.

We have a rectangular swath of grass on the other side of our driveway that we lovingly call The North Yard. It is perfectly park-like and verdant with green and growing things. It is the largest chunk of yard without a building on it in the few surrounding blocks. At one point, early on, I put out slate pavers and made a fire circle and we used to invite friends over to enjoy the quiet evenings on the cooler half of the year. 

The North Yard is the top right section
in red border (the backward L shape is 
our property. The Old Coot's is top left.

The neighbor (whose property is shown on the top left), however, made it hard to enjoy. I caught him sneaking across the North Yard on more than one occasion, taking advantage of the shade under the big trees. This was forgivable, if I only pretended not to see him. However, he caused me some frustration when, while we were away at the beach for a week one year, I returned to see that the grass in The North Yard had been mowed, and cut far shorter than I would have preferred.

When I approached the neighbor about this, he simply said in defense of his trespassing, “People think it is my yard”. I'm not sure, but I think I said “Cha!” in scoffing tones.

I clearly and firmly asked him not to do that there, here and he offered me a cold water bottle in what I thought then, was a gesture. Offering an olive branch, perhaps. Then, he did it again. He was clearly full of “treasons, stratagems and spoils”. We Bare's are a generous lot. We like to help the neighbors and we like to be of use. Sturdy neighborhood relationships build sturdy neighborhoods. I was raised to show deference to my elders. However, we have our limits. Cutting the grass while we're away because he had told people that that length of yard was his, was that limit. Doing it several more times after being told not to in no uncertain terms, was the frozen limit. As you can imagine, as Bertie Wooster might say, “this got right in amongst me”.

Three times in all, this fiend in human shape cut my grass without permission before we put up a fence to block his access. But during this silent groundskeeping war, I learned something that aided my approach after that.

During the 1950s and 60s, a very prominent local judge lived in what is now our house. The Right Honorable Harold “Hal” Hammer Walker, raised his family under this very roof tree. Walker updated and expanded the house and premises (and we have subsequently added to his additions) but he also had an ongoing conflict with the old neighbor that caused a rift across property lines.

I had the honor of helping Hal Jr. many times at the library, and, as the late Right Hon’s son and namesake, he regaled me with many tales of his father’s storied career. One in particular helped to assuage my tension about my pesky neighbor. On the property line between my western border (and the old fellow’s eastern one; see the above picture) are three magnolia trees. They’re huge and glorious, but like all such trees, they drop litter all year. I’ve allowed the space beneath all my magnolia trees to become natural areas as a result. This is definitely because of how much leaf litter they drop, but also because the big trees usually have fairly shallow roots which are murder to mower blades.

The old neighbor hated these trees, because he was more than a little obsessive about his yard, over which the trees hang. One evening, back in the early 60’s, the old gent waited until dark and came over onto the judge’s property and started to hack at the trees in order to kill them.

During this time, the judge had a groundskeeper by the name of Hoskins. Hoskins was an elderly man who had worked for the judge over many years and had become quite loyal to his family. Hoskins was leaving for the day when he spied the neighbor hacking away at the trees and shooed him back to his property. Hoskins told the judge, who made note of the situation. Some time later, the old neighbor came back onto the property to do more harm to the magnolias believing that, because the judge’s Cadillac was gone, the Right Hon. wasn’t at home. However, as he made his way through the gloom beneath the trees to begin his evil work, he bumped into something. Looking up in shock, he saw the judge standing there with a double-barrel shotgun broken open over his arm. Without a word, the judge closed the barrels and casually aimed it at the neighbor’s belly button. The message was clear and the neighbor never came back over. At least until I moved in, forty years later.

That situation has echoed in my mind. Nothing could be more resounding to me than bumping into a landowner who was not going to take any more guff from his irascible neighbor. If ever there was a formidable and fearless judge, that judge was this judge. We Bare’s are brave souls, but I had no inkling of threatening the old man with a shotgun. In later years in response to the judge’s threat to his well being, the neighbor put up a tall white PVC fence all around the back part of his property, in a large U shape. I’m grateful for this fence, because it has allowed us privacy and also helped to make a courtyard for us.

As I say, there were no shotguns in my plans, but once I knew this story and understood that the problems we had been having were nothing new, we decided to put up a fence around our North Yard. This prevented the man from coming over with his tractor to mow and also made it that much more difficult for him to use the yard as a way to scamper out and back on his nightly misadventures. I also started turning on, and keeping on, the lights. This man’s wife was a saint and on more than one occasion she came over to apologize for her spouse’s behavior, but apparently he had been making himself a nuisance all up and down his side of the street. One neighbor who lives all the way up at the top of the hill at the end of the block called him “the Grouch”. Fitting.

Our new neighbors are far cooler. They’ve been generous and kind and obviously have a way better approach to property issues. They talk and see if we can come up with a mutual solution. They also live here in the first half of the year, only, preferring to move to their other home up north where the summers are, as yet, not so dauntingly humid. We’re grateful for them, for sure.

What does all this have to do with outdoor lights? Well, to me, the biggest deterrent to shenanigans of any kind is a well lit exterior. It prevents all but the stupidest people from attempting to gain access to the house and grounds and though we have had other troubles over the years, we’re certainly much less likely to deal with sneaks and peeping toms, if their actions are on display under spotlights. Sometimes, the best defense really is a good offense. That and a host of bright lights causing every shadow to vanish instantly. I’ve not come to cameras yet, and I may never do so. My brother has one of those camera doorbells and we definitely came close one year to having one, too, mainly so that we could know when packages were delivered, but such things are extravagances. The best part of having smart bulbs in place is that I can change their color manually, so that when proselytizers or Jehovah’s Witnesses come looking for new souls, I can adjust (our house is white) the lights to blood red or venomous green to frighten them away.

I admire the judge and his audacious use of a shotgun, but there are subtler ways of deterring pests. Smart bulbs are cheap and effective and they can, with fences, end up keeping old coots off the property.