Well, the eclipse the media has been hyping for the last while is to occur today. No, I won't be watching it in person. We are in the 75% zone and I will see it better on the computer. Mom read a story about a lethal small plane crash at a town where people are gathering to view it. The town of Madras is stuffed with "eclipse tourists" arriving for the viewing.

I didn't see much worth commenting on over the weekend. The garden work is winding down so there isn't much to say there. I think it is time to take out the peppers and harvest the very few fruits the plants managed to produce. I haven't had any luck at all with peppers this year. The seeds I started failed and the transplants never did more than barely survive. I think that cardinal I saw has been eating some of my cherry tomatoes. That is OK so long as he leaves some for us--and he has. The gardening season may be winding down faster than I expected. It certainly feels as though the season is about three weeks later than the calendar says it is. While we did our errands on Saturday I noticed leaves already starting to turn.

Jerry Lewis has died at age 91. I remember many of his films fondly, though I wouldn't go out of my way to view them. Once upon a time I would have been sad at the passing of a popular performer from my youth. But somehow I don't feel the same impact. "To every thing there is a time and a season for everything under the sun."

Question: how long can we afford this parasitic situation? We have a parasitic elite in government and in the economy. The costs of maintaining them are out of control and most of them are demanding even more from those of us who can least afford it. Their tame media voices and lobbyists constantly point at the "entitlements" while not mentioning obscene salaries and outsized bonuses for running their companies into the ground, or demanding an increase in the budget for the increasingly inept military, or in the name of law and order sanction legalized looting of the assets of people who are never charged much less convicted of any crime (a.k.a., civil asset forfeiture). The bills for #45 simply are the tip of a very ugly iceberg. James Kunstler put a post up that ties in: Diminishing Returns. I think we have passed the point of diminishing returns (where each new round of investment yields less in returns than the previous round) to the point of negative returns (where each new round of investment actually creates a loss.)

Ronni Bennett's post at Time Goes By today struck a chord. Last year and the year before we went on several day trips but, though we enjoyed them, we did not follow up this year. Traveling, even for a day when someone else is driving, is a pain and we felt that too much of the time was devoted to shopping. Once upon a time I did indulge in the national sport, which is shopping not football or baseball or basketball. As I have gotten older the acquisitive urge has gone into reverse. Cleaning?? Well, when the spirit moves and, thankfully, it doesn't move nearly as often these days. We arrange things so that we aren't rushed any more and we try to get our shopping done early before the crowds come out. We have dumfounded some people when we reject so-called free items but too often we find "free" is too expensive. And we have paid little attention to the eclipse mania. I did start the live streaming and got bored half way through. We didn't even think of driving somewhere to see the totality. I spent a long time doing things I had to do because of a job, a course of study, or a relationship demanded it. Now I am retired. I do what is needful only as needed and so many things just aren't needful.