January 7

 Well the winter storm missed us to the south and the one coming in will set up even further south. We did get some snow but most of it is gone already. The cold isn't as cold as predicted but cold enough to make me get out my winter coat which I really don't like wearing. I avoid bringing it out for as long as I can. We had doctors' appointments yesterday and shopping today. I will finish our shopping tomorrow.

Bill Astore has an interesting post this morning which applies Darwin's theories to warfare. Reading it I realize that my exposure to Darwin has been rather fragmentary. I got pieces during my classes while I pursued degrees in biology and history. I have moved his works into my "to read" column for this year.

January 5

 First weekend of the new year and it finally feels like the holidays are over. Speaker Johnson did manage to "win" a continuation of his speakership into this new Congress but I wonder what Trump promised the holdouts in the Republican caucus to switch their votes and how much Johnson promised.

My agenda for the new year involves a good cleaning and rearranging in the kitchen. Not all at once because I don't have the stamina for that any more. We also plan to watch less of the crap on TV--too much nonsensical repetition, too much programing that we either don't want to see at all or have seen all too much, too damned many commercials. I plan to tune into Pandora much more often.

Although the House managed to elect a speaker without an overwhelming amount of drama and chaos, and will easily confirm Trump's win I don't think passing meaningful legislation will be easy. The Republicans do have a majority in the House and I doubt the Democrats will try to give the Republicans a taste of the shit they served up last time. No one is spouting spurious notions of election fraud. But the margins are very thin and neither side is all that unified.

This post by Denise Donaldson at PONDERMENTS makes a number of points neither side wants to look at. As she notes the Democrats seem to be looking at their "messaging"and how it failed to convince voters to vote for them. Their message said everything was good, inflation was down, unemployment was down, we had the best economy in the world and the best recovery from COVID. A lot of people tried to tell their advisors and pundits that, at the personal level, the stats simply didn't reflect their reality. Take a look at the statistics in the article and remember that many of those statistics didn't make it into the measures of inflation. But the Republican message going forward into their "trifecta" government doesn't really reflect reality either. The problem of rising costs is not really something Trump can cure no matter how often he assures us that only he can solve it. Or wants to solve because any solution would hit greedy corporations hard. But Donaldson also note the neither party has the will to strike at the real root cause of our discontent. I have often said that we have left and right wings of the same party--the Wall Street Party.

You don't often see anyone suggesting that we should remove highways. Progress is usually defined by how many more miles of highway are built. This article is one of the few. During the decade after the "Great Recession" a number of places started reducing some four lane highways to two lane roads and some two lane roads were put back to gravel. All of the examples I saw in articles were in rural areas that no longer carried enough traffic to justify the maintenance. I don't think we will see a massive move to remove highways in cities and their surrounding areas. Too many people who work in cities actually live well outside the cities. A catch phrase of about a decade ago advised potential home buyers to "drive till you qualify" because so many were priced out of the city and near by suburban markets. That is about when we started commenting on the "refugees from Chicago" because, for a number of years, several families or couples moved into neighboring units while they searched for a stand alone home to buy or build. We haven't seen so many of them lately but some of the developments are still under construction.

January 2, 3

Happy New Year--one day late. I spent yesterday cooking. We had the better part of a turkey breast from Christmas so I fixed two quarts of turkey soup base and a turkey/noodle casserole which are all in the freezer. When I wasn't tending what was on the stove I worked on my new doily. I didn't look at any of my e-mail or articles yesterday so I have a bit to catch up on.

There isn't much to distinguish this new year from the old one--just a change of one digit. The news yesterday (and so far today) has been dominated by the attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans that has (so far) killed 15 and injured 30+. The new year was only about three and a half hours old and we had our first mass murder attack. I told Mom yesterday that we have moved from being shocked and surprised by such events to simply being shocked. That these things happen isn't a surprise any more.

03**************************************************************

We finally got some snow and may get a bit more. It wasn't much and most of the main streets are clear. Mom had a couple of prescriptions which I went out to pick up. Other than that short errand we aren't doing anything until Monday when we have a couple of appointments. The TV content is getting more and more boring and irritating. Mom keeps asking me if there isn't ANYTHING else on there. I finally got tired of it and read her the line up from the on-line guide. Eventually we left the picture on but the volume muted while I let Pandora play on my MacBook.

Stray thought: we seem to have become a very judgmental people. The first laudatory obituaries for President Carter have elicited a number of not so kind posts picking apart his legacy. Often the writers take one action Carter took, or didn't take, they don't agree with. On the whole I think Carter is one of the more exemplary Presidents in our history and especially when compared with the once and future President Trump. I think Trump is a horrible human being. However, in future days, which given my age I probably won't see, historians might find that some of Trump's policies and actions were praiseworthy. Maybe, as a society, we should be kinder and more balanced in our appraisal of our leaders.

Stray thought #2: Evidently the Surgeon General wants the Federal government to put a cancer warning on alcoholic beverages. I think we have enough warnings, on labels or otherwise, and I think most of them are simply background noise. I don't pay much attention to them now. I don't smoke but I remember when the labels were first put on cigarettes. They didn't really have much impact. What really curtailed smoking were the fast rising cost because of the increased taxes on tobacco products and the restrictions on where a smoker could light up. While smokers had the right to light up others who shared the public spaces also had the right not to inhale their exhalations. Do we really need the Federal Nanny disapproving of another habit?

December 30

 Last Monday of 2024 and two days from the end of another year I am glad to see recede into the past. However, having read a lot of history I have come to realize that the past is never really past. Its tendrils weave into the events we experience in every present we live through. Listening to the news recounting the long life of Former President Jimmy Carter I am reminded of that.

Bill Astore on his substack blog today echoes that notion (that the past is in the present). There is also a Biblical idea that a "prophet is without honor in his own country" and in his own time. Dwight Eisenhower's reputation as President under went a serious reappraisal about 25 years after he left the White House. Early evaluations cast him as a somewhat slow witted (or senile) old man who didn't do much. Later historians thought he was greatly underestimated and was in fact a canny player on the world stage and set up the conditions for an American economic explosion. Carter was dismissed in much the same way.

Stray thought: Some years ago I read Vera Britain's memoir A TESTAMENT OF YOUTH which covered her life in pre-WWI England through her service in as a nurse during the war and her efforts to build a life after. Before the war she was studying English at Oxford and after she decided to go back to Study. The head of the women's college wasn't very enthusiastic because Britain had been considered barely qualified for the English program and not at all for History. When Britain said she wanted to study History to find out why the nations of Europe went to war in 1914 she was told that the program didn't cover recent events defined as anything within the last 50 years. They thought that a space of time was necessary to provide perspective. That might not be a bad notion.

Stray thought: during a couple of the cheating scandals that engulfed a couple of the military academies and the part of the service that mans the nuclear missile sites I was surprised--not by the scandals themselves but by the commentary on them. The commentators were shocked the behavior of people they somehow thought were more "honorable" than the population from which they came.

December 26, 27, 28

 Boxing Day today in Canada and the UK. Hope your Christmas (or first day of Hanukah) was pleasant. Ours was quiet here at home. We had turkey, mashed sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and Brussels sprouts for supper. I wove several squares on my zoom loom and picked apart several I had connected and thought better of what I had done. I have an idea I want to try after New Year's Day to connect those squares but I am not going to start that until then. We watched a whole star of our DVDs because nothing interested us on cable. Today I wove several more squares, got the kitchen cleaned up, made oatmeal for breakfast and got a cake in the oven. We will have pork chops with mashed potatoes for supper because I have the chops thawed and don't want to risk them going bad. I won't have to do more than heat up meals for the next week. We'll live on left-overs.

Reading list:

1) Bill Astore at Bracing Views casts considerable doubt on the notion of "trusting" the government. However, his article suggests that we shouldn't trust other aspects of our social/political system. He reminds us of how old Biden looked during the 2020 campaign with his physical stumbles, mental hiccups, and other signs of decline. Astore argues that, because of COVID, we simply didn't see enough of him to have notice the signs. Well, I did notice but I also saw the same signs with Trump and in a choice between the two I chose Biden. I don't trust most of what the government puts out or promises. I spend a good bit of time trying to figure out how to lessen my reliance on the government but some of what they do is so necessary and so embedded in our society that it is a challenge.

27************************************************************************************

Our iron grey skies finally decided to dump some rain on us. We expect another couple of days before the temperatures fall to more normal levels. Right now we have high 40s or low 50s. I saw something sprouting in the containers. I have no idea what it is but it won't last long with colder temps coming

I am in a "low power" mode and simply puttering around puttering around. As I mentioned, the embroidered pillow case was the last completion for this year. That makes two pairs of pillow cases, a table topper, two embroidered/cross-stitched table scarves, an eight piece set of placemats and napkins, four crocheted lap blankets. Not bad. I am already lining up the needlework for next year. I just started a new doily which will be a bit of a challenge along with the two to-be-embroidered/cross-stitched table clothes, a lap blanket in process, and a whole bunch of woven squares to put together for something undecided yet. I will also bring out a quilt that is started but has been in limbo for about two years. Time to make progress on that.

Well, it is finally official--the bald eagle is the official bird of the U.S. We both were surprise because we thought it had been since the founding of this country. Evidently not. The BBC has a nice article here.

28*******************************************************************************

Quiet Saturday watching our own re-runs. We watched one of the local Chicago channels for news but switched to our DVDs. Most of the rest is news/commentary/speculation so limiting my exposure to it seems to be the way to mental health. There seems to be two camps: the hysterical Democrats and the sycophant Republicans. A few seem to be taking a wait-and-see attitude. I am in the middle camp. I have never had a good opinion of Trump. I never watched THE APPRENTICE because I never liked the "reality" type of TV show. (I never watched AMERICA'S GOT TALENT, SURVIVOR, THE VOICE etc., either.) For some time I have thought that some aspects of the Federal government (and perhaps State governments as well) needed a thorough reform but not a thorough demolition. We'll have to see what the Trump and his acolytes actually do.

I favor the old admonition:

    Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change

    The strength to change the things I can change

    And the wisdom to know the difference.

That is the trick--to tell which is which is which.

December 23

 Well the snow is still hanging on and we have a gray and cloudy day. There may be more precipitation but we aren't going out so we aren't concerned. I have already turned off the TV--the insanity of what goes on or, rather, the insanity of the news coverage irritated me so I turned off the news rather than throw something at the screen. Instead we are playing a Charlie Chan marathon. We have a nice collection of our own reruns. But I am still reading what has arrived in my e-mail. That I can ignore or scan or read carefully as I choose. It isn't nearly as irritating.

Here is some of what I am reading:

1) Alfred McCoy who wrote a recent book on the transitions from one world order to another over the last couple of thousand years ( TO GOVERN THE GLOBE) posted a piece on Tomdispatch: "The World's Four Legacy Empires Going Down."

December 22

 Good morning. Only three more days til Christmas. The weather forecast predicts above "normal" temperatures which should get rid of the snow we have now. We are supposed to have a couple of days of rain but nothing more. I put that word in quotes because the weather over the last couple of decades has been anything but normal. We aren't planning anything special.

I finished another embroidery piece--the second of a pair of pillow cases. I completed the other a month or so ago. That will probably be the last completion for the year. Next year will be devoted to finishing some projects that are a bit too far along to finish quickly. The whole purpose of doing hand work is to slow down. I wouldn't have said that a couple of decades ago when I was still in the rat race they call life in this country--doing everything as fast as possible and getting on with the next thing or trying to juggle four and five things at the same time.

Well, the clowns in congress finally got a continuing resolution to keep the government in operation for another quarter. The new shitshow same as the old shitshow. And the same as all the other quarterly or semiannual shitshows for I forget how long. It is getting a bit boring and very irritating. It isn't even a full budget. They (past and present members of the House especially) haven't been able to get an agreement on a real budget for the last four administrations--if not longer. This time we had the added spectacle of Elon Musk's self-serving interference which had a lot of commentators (inside and outside government) wondering who is the real President-in-waiting. Trump came in with his own two-cents only after Musk created his twitter storm and raised his ruckus.

Bill Astore has an acerbic post this morning on the mess in the Middle East. He takes exception to the New York Times editorial opining on finding a "nuanced" position on the "Hamas-Israel" war because he can't really see such a position. Frankly, I can't either. The response to the October 8th Hamas attack on Israel has been to destroy the Palestinians under the guise of destroying Hamas. In the back of my mind was something I had read about the aims of the ultra-conservative Jewish groups aims to create a Greater Israel that approximates the territories of the Jewish kingdom under Solomon and other kings. It totally incorporates the West Bank, Gaza, parts of Lebanon, Jordon, and Syria. As Astore points out the actions Israel has undertaken amounts to a one state "solution" which leaves the Palestinians without any state at all.

Another aspect of the shitshow in Washington is that to keep up our government's support for Israel they keep increasing the aid to Israel and cut things like support for research and treatment of childhood cancer. Death in one hand and death in the other and death all around.