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Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / A Little Good News: Team Players

A Little Good News: Team Players

by | 89 Comments

This post is in: 

This has been going around Facebook today. From the LATimes story:

Paradise had no uniforms and most of the families had only the clothes on their backs. When they arrived, they found new uniforms, knee pads and socks for every player. There was also a room full of goods for families and dinner was served.

At the end, the Paradise coach was presented with gift cards for each player and family, $300 per student. More here.
Open thread. I will be back tonight with a slew of Thanksgiving recipes.

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    JGabriel

    I posted this in the last thread, but it was at the dead end of the thread, so I’m re-presenting it here.

    In honor of Trump’s recommended forestry policy:

    Rakeman – Eugene Chadbourne.

    And: Praise the Auburn Girls Volleyball Team!

  3. 3.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @zhena gogolia:

    Where is everybody?

    Probably Thanksgiving shopping. It’s crazy where I work today. Double whammy of Thanksgiving and normal Sunday shopping

  6. 6.

    Patricia Kayden

    Compassion and kindness are still abundant despite Trump. On another note, apparently Finland’s Prime Minister denied telling Trump to rake forests. Lol

  7. 7.

    zhena gogolia

    Has Trump ever set foot in a forest? I’m not exactly nature girl, but what the hell is he thinking?

  8. 8.

    oatler.

    @JGabriel: Always been a fan of the electric rake!
    NPR has been running stories about the heroism of people caught up in the fires (ambulance rescue stymied by overheating engines etc,).

  9. 9.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    What a lovely thing for that Auburn team to do.

    We’re going to our son and DIL’s house for Thanksgiving. He’s been showing us the Fast and Furious movies one at a time and says we’ll be watching on Thursday too. The last one we saw was Tokyo Drift and I believe we’re watching them in order. How many more are there?

  10. 10.

    JGabriel

    @zhena gogolia:

    Has Trump ever set foot in a forest? I’m not exactly nature girl, but what the hell is he thinking?

    The mistake you’re making here is using Trump and thinking in the same paragraph.

    The verbal diarrhea that emanates from Trump’s mouth doesn’t come from his brain – it comes from his gut, like most diarrhea.

  11. 11.

    p.a.

    I keep hoping the great majority of the missing have bugged out and have lost means of communication, and aren’t aware they’re on any list. Fingers crossed.

  12. 12.

    JAFD

    (Continued from morning thread)

    Spending two wks in a teaching hospital, if I had a dime for every MD who saw me, I could get one of Starbucks fanicer coffees…

    Am a geography buff, one NJ born young lady with parents from Lahore was impressed that I’d ever heard of the place, let alone had vague idea where it was.

  14. 14.

    Barbara

    @JAFD: Gosh, I hope you are okay. Lahore is not an obscure place. It’s just amazing what you can get away with not knowing when your country seems to be the center of the universe. Once had a lovely chat with an elderly lady who was amazed that we not only knew where Revelstoke was, but had been there.

  15. 15.

    JAFD

    Anyway, IMHO, ye USA oughta be educating all the medical personell we need, and maybe some for the third world..

    ISTR a report, we opened only new medical school in two decades 1980-2000, tho about twenty are opend or planned since 2000.

  18. 18.

    Barbara

    @JAFD: Virginia opened two new medical schools since 2000, both in Southwestern, VA. My niece graduated from one of them.

  20. 20.

    smintheus

    @zhena gogolia: The normal partisan trolls who infest Wikipedia have been absent as well, the ones who automatically delete embarrassing info about Republicans. So I took the opportunity to improve the coverage of controversies that had been all but excluded from Pam Bondi’s page. The public ought to know that Trump’s new candidate for AG, like his last AG, is a notorious crook.

  22. 22.

    JAFD

    @Barbara: I’m fine. The early dusk falls upon New Jersey. Smart mammals consider hibernation…

    (Had a heart attack last month, was really bad ooff for a while)

  25. 25.

    Shantanu Saha

    If it were a college women’s volleyball team, all members of both teams (and their coaches) would have been sanctioned by the NCAA.

  27. 27.

    Steeplejack

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    He’s been showing us the Fast and Furious movies one at a time and says we’ll be watching on Thursday too.

    God, that’s awful. My condolences.

    And, no offense intended, but I thought you would be too old to have a 19-year-old son.

  29. 29.

    dlwchico

    My friend lived in Paradise. His wife said something about how it was getting dark outside and it looked like it might rain so he went to cover up some stuff outside their house and quickly realized this wasn’t a storm cloud.

    He went inside and told her it looked bad and they should leave. While this was happening their daughter and grandkid pulled up at their house. The school had been told to evacuate. The wife left with the grand kid, then the daughter in her car and then my friend last in his truck.

    The road going past their house was all ready in full traffic jam mode. A nice fella in a big truck with a contractor’s decal on the side let my friend onto the road.

    Traffic moved slow. (It took 5 hours for them to get to Chico. Usually it’s maybe a half hour drive). At one point my buddy had flames on both sides of the road and he saw the fire moving across the road behind him. He pulled his truck off the road and ran ahead to the daughter’s car. As he did this he saw the nice guy in the truck behind him do the same, pulling his truck off the road and jumping out of his car with a child in each arm, running down the road.

    When my friend got to the daughter’s car there was a burning branch on the hood of the car. He told her to pull over also. They ditched that car and moved forward through the traffic jam to the wife in the van.

    At one point they were getting ready to leave the van also. Traffic had come to a standstill and the fire was getting close. They pulled off the road and turned off the van but then traffic started moving again. Their van is an old one with starter problems. Luckily it started right up this time. They got down to Chico safely.

    *******
    My mother has some old friends that lived in Paradise. They are both in their 70’s. The wife was using the restroom at their home and felt a lot of heat on her back. She mentioned this to her husband and he went outside and saw fire. Close enough that the heat was felt through the wall of the house. They each grabbed a bag. He took their car and she went to the unattached garage where their camper van was. As she got into it she saw many sparks flying through the air. As she backed out the entire garage was engulfed in flames.

    They are fine now. They had lunch with my mom the other day. The lady said if her husband hadn’t looked outside they would not be having lunch with my mom, they’d be ash.

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    I found it a little too soap-operatic (in the early going—might have improved later), so I watch it only when I’m at Sighthound Hall. Bro’ Man watches it religiously, both for the beefcake and the scenery. I get sick of him saying “I’ve been there” every five minutes. He did a three-week ramble around that part of the coast a year or two ago and has actually been to all those locations, but enough already.

  36. 36.

    Gelfling 545

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??: Seriously. I’ve been to the market 3 times this weekend because we have not only Thanksgiving but my daughter’s birthday dinner which is today.
    You know what’s a bad idea? Making 3 recipes you’ve never made before for a special dinner. And one of them is one of those evil recipes that tells you at the end that you need something not listed in the ingredients. ?

  38. 38.

    Mnemosyne

    @gene108:

    If you look in the comments to Anne Laurie’s post of the animal charities, there are some human charities in there as well. Local food banks would probably be a great idea right about now.

  40. 40.

    opiejeanne

    @Omnes Omnibus: Dusty here too, and I just cleaned the joint.

    Why do I smell smoke now? It’s not the power of suggestion because mr opiejeanne smells it too.

  41. 41.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Doug R: So that’s the one we’re going to see?

    I can sort of fool myself into enjoying them if I try to think like a story teller. Tokyo Drift was an aesthetic. I can deal with that for a couple of hours.

  43. 43.

    West of the Rockies

    @dlwchico:

    So, so many similar stories, dlw… One of my former students posted her escape vid online. The footage is surreal and horrific.

    Pick up a copy of the CNR, if you haven’t yet, dlw. I’ve shopped in that desiccated Safeway multiple times.

    People can be terrible (as Trump and his merry band of Wingnuts reveal daily). They can also be so very kind and compassionate. Yay, Auburn High School!

  44. 44.

    Mnemosyne

    I woke up feeling a little bit crappy, used my inhaler, went outside to drive to and from my RWA meeting, and now I can’t draw a deep breath without having to cough. Fucking PM2.5 particles are going to trigger bronchitis, and I’m nowhere near any ongoing fires that I know of. It’s all the shit being carried far from the fire sites by the wind.

    I wanted to go to a big NaNoWriMo event tonight, but I guess not. Fuck.

  46. 46.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Mnemosyne: And since I see that you are here, I’ll thank you for your apology and vote of confidence, in case you didn’t see my comment on the dead thread a day or so ago. But keep in mind that I get things wrong too.

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    There is always a tweet!

  48. 48.

    Mnemosyne

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    You’re welcome! No one is ever going to get everything right, but AOC has been so meticulous about working Pelosi’s name into every one of her tweets about the Green New Deal that it made me go, “Hmmmm ….” ?

  50. 50.

    oldster

    Man, I love heart-warming stories of personal charity. Regular people stepping up to care for each other when times are hard and someone is in trouble.

    Goddamn, I am tired of heart-warming stories of personal charity. Each one is a story of the failure of our government or of our societal systems, generally the result of intentional right-wing f*ckery.

    People donating to a cancer-victim because our health-care system still sucks. Donating a car to a worker because our public transportation system sucks.

    And now, donating uniforms to a sports-team because the Republicans and the Oligarchs have kept the country from doing anything about climate change until things have gotten so bad that we are having apocalyptic fires in CA.

    Look, the Auburn team that did this are clearly wonderful people, and deserve our praise and gratitude. But the Republicans who made it necessary for them to do it should not be let off the hook.

    Every cancer-victim without health-insurance should be pinned on the Republicans and their oligarchic masters. Every worker who does not have a bus to get to work. And every kid burned out by fires that are caused or worsened by climate change.

    The Republicans and their denialist friends need to be held accountable.

  52. 52.

    FelonyGovt

    @Mnemosyne: I’ve been having bad respiratory issues, too, and I’m in the South Bay, not really near the Southern California fires. I hope you feel better soon. I also hope it rains really soon and that they can finally get a handle on all our awful California fires.

  54. 54.

    narya

    Mixed up two batches of cookies (thin whole wheat that will get an orange glaze) and molasses ginger rye crisps. I”m bringing the cookies to beer school next weekend (longstanding tradition at a bar I love), and started up early, plus those two doughs are easier to work if they’re refrigerated for a day or two. (I’m only working on Monday this week, so will have the rest of the week to bake them and the others.) The other three are Anzac biscuits, spent grain and barley cookies with chocolate filling, and oatmeal stout oatmeal cookies, with cranberries and chocolate chips. I found out that one of the beers has notes of hazelnut, mocha, and toffee, so I may have to come up with a sixth cookie . . .

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    @FelonyGovt:

    It’s probably the PM2.5 particles that are bugging you, too — those little fuckers drift a long way and do a lot of damage. You can find websites that break the pollution levels in your area down by the type of particles, and even areas that have overall “good” air in So Cal have elevated levels of PM2.5 particles right now. I was already getting over a cold, so they nailed my lungs at exactly the wrong time. ?

  56. 56.

    raven

    @gene108: The mayor gave this link and said all the $$ went directly to relief.

    Thank you for donating to the Camp Fire Relief Efforts. Please find a few questions answered below:
    1. Where will my donation go to? 100% of your donation will stay local. We will be making decision as needs arise over the next year or more.
    2. Will any of my donation go towards administrative fees for your Foundation? None of your donation will go towards administrative fees. There is a small fee to use PayPal services.
    3. How do I set up a fund? Please email [email protected] for inquiries. Please be patient with a return email as we have many requests right now.
    4. Is my donation tax deductible? Yes.
    Please find donation options through multiple organizations below. Electronic transfers are accepted through PayPal.
    Another option is to drop off or mail a check to either addresses below. Please make checks payable to “GVBCF-Camp Fire”.
    190 Cohasset Rd., Chico, CA 95926
    250 Hemsted Dr., Ste. 100 Redding, CA 96002

  57. 57.

    opiejeanne

    @Mnemosyne: @FelonyGovt: I’m sorry you’re having respiratory problems. I’d probably be in the hospital if we had that level of crap in the air and I hope you don’t end up there. It has to be far worse than what we endured this summer from the fires in BC, although the trees across the street were obscured by the smoke, like a foggy morning.

  58. 58.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack:

    It’s total soap opera, but the acting is great. Unfortunately I saw a spoiler for tonight’s episode so am in the same bummed state I was for the entire third season of Downton. I’ve never been to Cornwall, but I know how people are about it. We have a friend who’s read all the Poldark novels and goes hiking there every year.

  59. 59.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @narya: That sounds like fun. I once wrote a book about a girl who was a medieval Brewster, ie she made ale. In the European middle ages, almost all ale was brewed by women because it was considered food. The difference between beer and ale in their terms was the presence of hops in beer. Hops gave beer its characteristic bitterness and also acted as a preservative. Ale had to be drunk within a few days or it went sour, but beer could be mass produced. At that point, it became a product that needed capital for equipment and men took over.

  60. 60.

    Mnemosyne

    @opiejeanne:

    We only have a relatively low level of nasty crap in our air down here. Poor Sister Golden Bear is basically confined to her apartment in SF with the air purifier running nonstop and she’s totally miserable because her sinuses and throat are so clogged.

  65. 65.

    raven

    From my pal

    For us, we’re doing okay. Confirmed yesterday that we lost our house, guest house, truck and a bunch of trees. Got out alive with two cars, our dog, several boxes & three suitcases.

    My wife has/is experiencing PTSD first hand – along with many, many others I’m sure. Took us three hours to escape with long periods of mid-day darkness, traffic gridlock, traversing burning vehicles , and everything aflame on either side of the road.

    We’re at the ocean now. Will be heading back later this week. Insurance is good. We will rebuild – both house and community. Nothing to do for us now. May reach out in 3-4 months if the promised assistance to those less fortunate than the two of us doesn’t meet expectations.

  66. 66.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Mnemosyne: Purple Air has a good air quality map showing data from individual sensors.

    https://www.purpleair.com/map#1/25/-30

    I’m also having respiratory issues. Chest is tight — although thankfully no additional problems breathing — and my throat is pretty raw. Even with a P100 mask and spending as much time indoors as I can.

    Thankfully I’ve got a HEPA filter at home. The Purple Air map is showing readings of 150 or more inside buildings near me. That’s triple the max for “healthy” air.

    Just thankful I’m not in Sacramento, let alone Chico.

    ETA: I see we were posting at the same time.

  68. 68.

    C Stars

    It’s surreal here in Berkeley, a lovely powder blue sky up above that darkens to brown all along the horizon. I haven’t been outside today so I don’t know how it smells, and also after a week of this I’m not sure I’d smell smoke anymore. Mainly now what we are feeling is the pain of inhaling. Next door neighbor is home and has their window open, which is surprising to me. We have a fancy (big) air purifier but it is a few years old and we haven’t changed the filter so who knows how much it is helping. Also recirculating air through our heating system which has a hepa filter, but there are cricks and cracks where I’m sure the smoke is getting in. At some point I have to just stop being neurotic because there’s nothing more we can do. Really eager for this to be over. Can’t imagine what it feels like for the evacuees who are trying to take care of their families cooped in shelters, dealing with “hazardous” AQI levels and cold nights and an uncertain future.

    Also, whoever wrote this timeline is fucking with us. The literal incineration of Paradise as a metaphor for the looming cataclysm of climate change…OK, OK, we get it already!

    Into this wild Abyss
    the womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave–
    Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
    But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
    Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
    Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain
    His dark materials to create more worlds,–
    Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend
    Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,
    Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
    He had to cross.

  70. 70.

    narya

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s fascinating. I don’t homebrew, but I have a friend who does (which is the source of my spent grain); he also grows his own hops. Between his beer and my sourdough culture and sauerkraut, we’re fermenting things all over the place–on purpose, I mean. How do the monks fit into the history you mention? Because they also seemed to regard beer as food, especially during lent. And what was the book you wrote?

  72. 72.

    smintheus

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s obvious nonsense, as any number of examples exist of inequality being transformed via non-traumatic means. Scheidel works in my discipline and is prone to making all manner of sweeping historical generalizations based on cherry-picked evidence. His original field was ancient demography, which (for nearly all practitioners) is all about cherry picking and creating grand models thereon.

    ETA: As Doug R just said.

  76. 76.

    divF

    @C Stars: I’m also in Berkeley. I ventured out for the first time since Wednesday, mainly to take someone to the airport and to get groceries. The stores were really quiet for an ordinary Sunday, much less the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

    I have been gasping for the last three days plus had a cold (or was it just reactive airway from the smoke?), but things are better now. If they hadn’t been, Madame and I would have been on I-80 heading east until we found a place with breathable air and a vacancy. As is, I think we can hold out until Tuesday night.

    ETA: one of the reasons we didn’t just decamp is that the chorus Madame is in is performing this afternoon – Handel’s Messiah (’tis the season…).

  78. 78.

    opiejeanne

    @smintheus: Isn’t Scheidel the guy who said there was not much change from the way things were done in medieval times until roughly… 1890? Ignored all of the Industrial Revolution. Didn’t change anything according to him, nor did the invention of photography or Elias Howe’s little invention.
    I think I sassed him pretty good if that was the same guy.

  79. 79.

    Ruckus

    @JAFD:
    Kaiser Permanente is building a medical school in Pasadena. I haven’t seen any info on when they expect to be open but they broke ground last year and are going full bore at this time.

  80. 80.

    gene108

    @smintheus:

    “Capital”, by Thomas Picketty, had the hypothesis that in Western Europe, at least, reversals in income inequality were driven by changes caused by the two World Wars.

    Might not be the case everywhere though

  81. 81.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @narya: I don’t know how the monks fit in. They probably did their own cooking and brewing. The book is a novel that’s still sitting on my computer, waiting for some better writer to come along and revise it.

  82. 82.

    C Stars

    @divF: It seems to be better today, doesn’t it, at least in terms of visibility. It’s not easy to just uproot for a week. Tickets out of Oakland and SFO got crazy starting on Tuesday. I tried to outrun the smog with my two young kids and did end up staying with family near Santa Rosa for a couple days, so we missed the really terrible days in the east bay (it wasn’t great up north, but slightly less apocalyptic). On the drive up (Thursday AM) the smoke was so heavy I could only see one car ahead on the Richmond Bridge.

    Anyway, sounds like you had a good reason to stay. The show must go on!!

  87. 87.

    smintheus

    @opiejeanne: Could be. He’s obviously way out of his lane when he’s opining about modern or world history, so I’m not tuning in to try to sort through his confusion.

    @gene108: Or maybe the mass production of automobiles. Or the invention of the printing press. Trying to explain all advances in social equality everywhere forever as due to “warfare, revolution, state collapse and plague” is silly and reductionist in the extreme…especially when, as with Scheidel, you immediately start carving out exceptions to your rule. Just seems like a small bore academic looking to jump on the public intellectual gravy train. There’s a fair amount of that going on in the Stanford Classics dept.

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