Two ramblings - one on human behavior in natural disasters, one on polls. Just things that have been on my mind.

We people are a remarkable species - and that is not always a positive, of course.

As you all know, the area in which I live was devastated by hurricane Helene. I did a few posts about our own personal experience - the punchline being how lucky we were. We've had a chance, now with power back, to catch up on some videos from areas like Chimney Rock, Bat Cave, Black Mountain and Asheville. My goodness - there are no words. Even in our specific area - where damage was seemingly random and spotty - my wife and I walked up one of our local hiking roads (1.5 miles up a dirt road - meaning 1.5 miles back down - neither fun for bad knees!). This is 1/4 mile from our home. We must have passed the cut ends and pieces of well over 200 trees, houses with the blue tarps indicating trees breaking through. We were very shaken.

The big damage determinants were definitely the 20 inches of rain prior to the storm, which made the trees very unstable in such winds. And for many of the hard hit areas, the effect of living near a stream or a river - and the sad fact that 20 inches of rain falling on high places means it has to go down - nearly 500 mudslides from the last data I heard.

Anyway - I am rambling. The point I wanted to make is that 99.9 percent of the people we ran into, our neighbors, others, were wonderful - pulling together, helping. Then...there was the one person a few houses down that had a full house generator she was running 24 hours daily - it uses piped in gas. The rest of the street had no power and we asked if we could charge our cell phones now and then on her outdoor plug. Another neighbor asked if they could store their insulin in her refrigerator. After a few days, she came to the conclusion that charging a cell phone now and then for a few people would run up her gas bill - one of the people who needed a phone charge is in a wheelchair, a young woman who has been doing incredible work for others in the storm. The person with the generator went up to her and others and said that when her gas bill came in, she was going to charge any extra to us on the street who charged our phones. Needless to say, she has lost any goodwill extended to her. But that is the SINGLE bad example of human behavior we observed. (well, aside from a friend of mine dumping AI pics and conspiracy crap they got from Fox) into our small gardening group. The goodness of people in tough times makes me smile. The awfulness of just a very few people in those times makes me shake my head with sadness.

The second ramble - about polls - just a few thoughts. I look at a few sites - Princeton (Sam Wang), the 538 aggregate primarily. What strikes me is the remarkable stability of this race if the polls are to be trusted at all - and that is a HUGE IF (I personally am not one who has much trust at all in polls). But - just looking at the 538 aggregate graphs - the numbers of both candidates is remarkably stable. It is almost unbelievable, really. The good news is that Harris has been ahead as soon as she replaced Biden. The bad news is that tfg clearly can do the equivalent of shooting someone on 5th ave. What it shows to me is that his supporters really are a sick, twisted cult. I do in my heart think that the polls are not picking up support Harris is gaining over time. I fully expect to be smiling on election night when the results come in.

And that is my Thursday night thought dump.