The coldest overnight temps for a good long while. The news posts the official temp at 18F. Since we have to go out today (eye exam) we are going to do our weekly shopping three days early. That will get us comfortably past the snow expected Sunday and Monday.
I guess 'tone deaf' covers this. They blame that ubiquitous "third party" for the advice which (they say) comes straight out of Emily Post. McDonalds evidently didn't bother to review the advice but I think someone would have had second thoughts since last month they got called out for their employee assistance phone line giving advice on applying for food stamps and other government aid.
June Calender has a post this morning that reflects some of our musings here. So many of us are totally divorced from nature except when a storm of some kind inconveniences us. Every now and then the inconvenience escalates to life threatening conditions (Sandi, Katrina, sudden blizzards). Others of us are tenuously connected to nature but very few of us have any prolonged contact or are in any way immersed in it for any length of time. That I find frightening because in the final analysis we are dependent on nature. This morning a brief news segment noted that, after three sub-freezing temperatures, a large part of the southern California winter vegetable crops. My first thought involved how soon we will see the effects on our food prices. But how many make that connection?
I have read enough about ALEC to despise it. This piece on Grist simply reinforces my antipathy. For decades we have been told that we need to adopt green technology--individually and collectively. Now that a larger number of us are doing so, ALEC wants to label those who have managed to put roof-top or other solar and wind generators "free riders" and to penalize them for doing so. The real problem involves the power companies who have been hit by reduced energy use (thanks to more energy efficient appliances) and the refusal of state governing boards to raise consumer rates at the companies' whims. So they want to pay reduced rates the so-called free-riders for their surplus electricity (that the utility company can then sell at a higher price) and they want those home owners to pay fees for the infrastructure. There is more but I will let you read it.
Nimue Brown at Druid Life takes a British politician to task not only for the life-destroying austerity but for semantic tricks that call the suffering a "sacrifice." Obviously the "sacrifice" wasn't chosen by those sacrificed. Austerity was, and is, sacrifice the way rape is sex.
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