We are starting today with more cool weather--only 42F. We should see some sun but the high might bet into the very low 50s. The outside plants are still doing well but a couple of them--the impatiens and clematis--will need watering today. I checked them yesterday. We should have rain Wednesday or Thursday so I hope I won't have to water anything else.

I spend the weekend on various chores. I pruned the hibiscus and set up four cuttings to, I hope, root. I put two in vermiculite and two in the seed starting mix I thought I would try out this year.  I want to see which does better. I sorted and organized my seeds getting ready to seriously make out my seed orders. I want to get them in early this year. Then I decided to tackle some bookshelves that have needed dusting for some time.

I only read through e-mail but didn't read the Google alerts or the Bloglovin' feeds. Then I finished The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh and a good part of Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Sugimoto. I decided Friday that I spend all too much time wading through the so-called news and the various other streams of articles and blogs. The writers I like to follow most post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday so I will work through those lists on those days.

Not really much to talk about. The first indictments in the Mueller investigation are in and no surprises. The Repthuglicans some kind, any kind of legislative win and are frantically trying to get the needed votes. Number 45 has been his usual bombastic braggart self so nothing new to comment on there. I haven't mentioned the Damnocrats because they haven't done anything to merit mentioning. Since at least 85% of my reading is on political or economic matters that leave me with a headache these days because the insanity, inanity, and cluelessness, best to think on other things--like evaluating the plants I put in the garden this year and considering what to put in next year.

Crisp fall weather without rain. The forecast says partly cloudy.

I found this piece of idiocy way too early. Why idiocy? Because the U.S. has the largest defense budget in the world--more than the next ten nations in the biggest spenders list. "Sequestration" simply meant the defense budget didn't grow as fast or, at worst, stayed at the same bloated level. Maybe he should be questioning where the money is spent. But then the Pentagon would have to develop a real accounting system that could actually track spending.

I have seen articles on the problems some low income Detroit residents have keeping up with water bills and the trials of being cut off. Not long ago I read a study which said nearly a third of Americans are in that boat now and the proportion will only get worse. This story is closer to home.

There is a bit of irony in the Whitefish/Puerto Rico story. It smacks very much of the kind of "pay to play" corruption which landed a former governor of Illinois in prison. That was Rod Blogojevich in case you have forgotten and I always thought the evidence against him was much thinner that what I see in the Whitefish case.

Jesse's Cafe Americaine has some interesting thoughts that touch home. Those thoughts are the last two of the post. Mom's insurance comes through Aetna. She recently received a letter informing her that Aetna will no longer work with Walgreens in filling prescriptions after January 1. She has had her prescriptions filled at Walgreens for years. CVS, Target, K-Mart, and Walmart are still on their preferred list but we have never liked CVS and all the others are further away. Staying with Walgreens means higher prescription costs. Bummer all the way. We had wondered why until we read about CVS negotiating to buy Aetna. The last observation on the blog is one we have seen underway here for some time. Right now one health organization has locked up most of the doctors and medical facilities in our area.

Another cool, almost cold, morning in the mid 30s. The weather predictions say we should get into the very low 60s. Quite a contrast with southern California with its triple digit record temps. The plants I still have in the gardens are doing nicely still--clematis, geraniums, creeping jenny and marigolds and (for now) impatiens. We haven't had a freeze yet although it has gotten close and we actually had to use the back window defroster and scrape ice off that car window yesterday. Frost on the roofs and the cars this morning.

Theodora Goss posted this on her blog today and I can agree with it whole heartedly. I have also gotten tired of all the screen time lately. And what I find so often is uninteresting, irritating or advertising for things I don't need or want. A couple of times I simply deleted all of the items without reading any. It is a love-hate relationship. I hate it when I have to erase e-mails that promise to make me "hard on demand." Or that want to sell me the latest weight loss product. I get a lot of those things. I generally ignore Facebook except for the occasional post from a family member and the three or four games I waste time on (though less time than I once did.) I don't follow Twitter or any of those and I never liked Pinterest at all. But I love how easy it is to find information that interests me via Google, Duck Duck Go, or Safari. I love that I can take a library of about a thousand books anywhere because it is all on my iPad. And I don't need to find shelf space for them.

Only 38F this morning and likely to go a bit lower since the sun isn't up yet. I switched the system from cool to heat and made sure the winter temperature was set. It won't go on for a while yet. The temperature in the house is 70F right now and the setting is 68F. We prefer to put on an extra sweater or a lap blanket of some kind to raising the thermostat. We may get some sun today.

Found this post on Patheos this morning. To use a phrase one of my history professors liked: the idea of diversity is "more honored in the breach than in the practice." Whether in religion, or in politics, or in economics, or in society, or in education we often want the corn plant to pretend it is a bean plant.

It was a long shopping/errand day. We had a longer grocery list than usual because we used down our freezer stores quite a bit. Usually we are done in less than two hours including going between stores. Price shock today: gasoline at $2.59/gal. Haven't seen that in quite a while.

One of our stops was the local meat market where we had another surprise of a more pleasant nature. I wrote in a post a while back that because of the shake up in our grocery store situation we were scrambling to find alternative sources for some of our favorite items. Lard was one of those items and we checked all the stores around us coming up empty. We finally found it at the Meijer store about 30 miles away. Well, looking at the shelves at the meat market while Mom told the butchers what we wanted and how we wanted it wrapped (yes the do do custom cutting and wrapping!!) I suddenly saw lard. We simply hadn't checked there because we only go when we have meat to buy and since the great rearrangement we hadn't needed anything else there. I am glad to have a closer alternative source. I always like alternatives.

John Feffer has an essay on Tomdispatch which parallels much of my thoughts as I read the news about secession/autonomy referrenda in various places like Catalonia and in northern parts of Italy. We have had a long period of political/territorial consolidation into, first, nation states and multi-ethnic empires and then, second, into trans-national organizations like the EU. But human affairs resembles something like a roller coaster--first you go up and then you go down. One of the factors driving the Feffer's "shattering" is a dissatisfaction with the policies of a distant power center. Not many in this country like D.C. much and resent their impositions and interference. That dislike is mirrored in the dislike many in Europe express with Brussels. Those powers are too distant, too dictatorial, and simply unresponsive to local concerns.

Gray day again with cooler temps. It looks like rain on and off--at the moment off. A perfect lazy day to read and stitch.

Speaking of reading, I just found this. The F-35 program has been plagued with problems from the first design. So the repair times are more than double estimates, parts are in short supply, and the repair facilities that were supposed to be up and running last year won't be ready until--2022. The statement that the military had been focused on "procurement" and spent "very, very little time on sustainment." The boys wanted their new toys--NOW--and would worry about how to keep them up later. Something has happened to our military's ability to plan and carry out programs efficiently and effectively. And it isn't good and doesn't bode well for the future. This is the military our leaders keep telling us is the best in the world?

The rain came in as promised about an hour before sunset with episodic showers all night. I took in the wind spinner and wind chimes for the season yesterday and found a split in one of the large pots. Damn!! Have to find a replacement in the spring. Major task today: cookies, as in pecan sandies. Perfect for a rainy Monday. Changed my mind on the cookies. We just finished the last of the cookies I made up over a week ago. If you remember I froze two thirds of them and we doled them out slowly. I will wait until we want cookies again and then do up the sandies.

I found another story on this yesterday. I look at recall stories mainly to see if the item is one we use or are likely to use and then to check the brands and distribution for whether that item is sold here. Although we do buy veggies we don't buy Walmart or Target veggies. Nor do we buy packaged vegetables. But the story reinforces my disgust and distrust of the "industrial" food system. The waste is incredible.

We had a nice mostly sunny day yesterday--warm enough to leave the storm door to the patio open using only the screen door. From the forecast today will be the last of the 70 degree temps with our daytime temps staying in the 50s and 60s and then plunging into the 30s and low 40s at night. A lot of rain and cloudy skies accompany those temps. Of course, that may change and probably will.

Nothing much to talk about. Every morning we look at the news on line--we rarely watch TV news anymore. But there is little that is really "new." The latest kerfuffle from the White House is flogged to death, the latest sexual misadventure by some rich, powerful, and well connected man will be minutely examined (to no result unless that is the desired result), the latest political maneuvering designed to make sure the top 0.01% gets tax "reform" that the rest of us pay for. But after you have called bullshit on all that a couple of hundred times it gets boring as hell. At last when I put another row of stitching on my latest crochet project is is a little closer to being something I can actually use. I think I will go back to it. See y'all later.

Found this early this morning and it certainly gives one food for thought. Whether a "prelude to war in Korea" or a "deficit neutral way to maintain Air Force staffing" or some other consideration, it smells thoroughly rotten. Don't you love how #45 fails to specify the so-called emergency. What "continuing and immediate threats" of what "attacks on the United States?" As the Rude Pundit noted in his post yesterday, America's wars since the end of WWII have been "bullshit." And perhaps David Kaiser's post today should make us a bit more cautious about what our government is doing.

The Telegraph had this article on the food shortage for the North Korean military on August 31 of this year. That story echoes this one from mid August. And then there is this article from yesterday. The North Korean government has long had its policy of "military first" and has basically shifted all resources to the military but has run into the problem of diminishing returns on their investment and running out of "investment." However I am not much comforted by the thought because the first article I linked to leads me to think we might be in the early stages of that "catabolic" cycle. They maintained their troop levels by making sure the troops were fed. We want to maintain troop levels by reactivating retired members of the military. During the crises of the third century CE the Roman government began collecting taxes in kind because coined money disappeared from the economy at the lower levels, passed laws making most occupations hereditary and branding or tattooing workers to ensure they didn't try to get around the law by moving to another part of the Empire. I wonder how far along the downward slide we are?

As someone who has worked entry level retail far more often than I wanted to over my life I can tell the perplexed "experts" why someone might not want those jobs. I can't begin to count the number of meetings I had to attend unpaid. Or how often we were told to clock out and then straighten up, clean up, stock and vacuum. Or how often my schedule was changed without much notice disregarding what ever I might have planned. Or how goddamned little I was paid. The anemic efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr ignores the fact that, in most areas, the amount is too low, even for someone who might work the old definition of full time (40 hours/week), to provide the funds needed for a single person to live on their own. The chief economist at some job site says there aren't enough people looking for work?? Well, I say there aren't enough people willing to work themselves to death to not quite make a living.

Although the weather has been nice I don't have much left to do outside. What is now in the beds will stay there to provide ground cover after the frost, which doesn't seem to be on the horizon just yet, kills them. It is also about time to disconnect the hose, drain it and put it away for the winter.

Well, the hose is drained, coiled and stowed for winter. I also added some soil to the hibiscus which is doing very well inside. I see a lot of new growth on it. I moved the five-gallon bucket with potting soil out of the shed and into the place it will occupy next summer after it is emptied. It will provide the pedestal for one of the three tiered pots. That opened up a lot of space in the shed and I can now reach everything much more easily.

Nothing much to comment on today.

The temperatures and other weather conditions finally feel somewhat normal for the season. For most of this strange year that has not been the case. Heatwaves in February that made it feel like late June or early July. Dry conditions when rain should have been plentiful and wet when things should have dried out. Fifteen named storms in the Atlantic ten of which became hurricanes, five of which hit the U.S. mainland with three of those doing an astonishing amount of damage. The "Lucifer" heatwave in Europe and hurricane Ophelia giving Ireland the strongest storm in 50 years. An astonishing fire season which seems to be an annual thing now. And all of that is on top of politics and economics so far out of anything we can call normal that it is nearly incomprehensible.

Here are some things I am reading today:

John Mauldin's Outside the Box features a piece by the Reformed Broker on automation. I don't know how many times I have looked at the stock market figures (out of curiosity since I don't have anything to invest) and asked "WTF???" Josh Brown might have an answer: terrified life-raft grabbing investors who are afraid they have no future. It seems uncannily like the situation Frederick Lewis Allen describes in Since Yesterday recounting the history investing euphoria jut before the 1929 crash.

Karina Black Heart posted this at Gods and Radicals that parallels the situation Josh Brown sketched. Brown's subjects are those who have done fairly well but are looking at a future that has no place for them. Heart's essay describes her own realization that the system is and always has been rigged and success, as defined by the rest of society,  has always been out of her reach. So she has decided to retrench and redefine success for herself.

For the most part I agree with this post at Strategic Living. I haven't seen the video the author links to but her "5 Things To Set Aside" are good ones. I would amend the first to "don't bother trying impress anyone." They will be impressed or not as they choose. I wouldn't hang my self-esteem on their decision. I long ago gave up being envious of other people's success. Such envy means you have compared yourself to others by standards you may not have even realize you have absorbed. Set your own standards for your success and celebrate all successes--your own especially. A long time ago I started paring down the mementos and such. For the most part they didn't really bring back memories, good or bad. The few things I have kept are associated with certain specific achievements. I revel in every gray hair, every wrinkle. I have earned every one of them. I will let others pretend sixty is the new forty or whatever suits their fantasy. I haven't yet mastered the art of letting confrontation go but I'm getting there. And actually I would amend that one as well: learn what it is worth spending your energy confronting and let the rest go.

OUCH!! I wonder how much of that moisture will go how far inland.

I am constantly amazed by the mind-boggling waste in industrial food processing. This is another such mind-boggling story. The recall goes from 2,000 pounds of meat (of all kinds) to 450,000 pounds or three days of production to almost a whole year. The problem seems to be the company's water supply.

I am a sucker for those odd quizzes on Facebook, especially those that ask how many of the 50 or 100 or whatever number of "classic" books or "must read" books, etc. Every time I get hooked by one (which is getting less frequent lately) several thoughts hit me. First, by what criterion are some of the listed books "classics" or "must" reads? Some are indeed classics but others I wouldn't call classics by any stretch of the imagination. Second, although I may have read other books by a given author I probably didn't read the one they list--and I don't intend to. Third, does starting and never finishing count? Nothing is a "must" read for me nowadays. I have gotten to the point where if the book doesn't interest me I don't slog through it as I once did. Fourth, I often can't remember if I read the book or saw the movie--or both. Fifth, I am amazed by how many of the books I remember reading, can tell you for which class or approximately when, but can't for the life of me remember much about the damned book.

Cool again today--starting in the mid 40s and going up to, maybe, 70F. But sunny and dry. The only task on the schedule is biscuit baking along with some half formed ideas. We'll see what besides the biscuits gets done.

Biscuits done. Bird feeder filled with a small dish for the ground squirrel.

Put some future containers away in the plant/sewing/whatnot room. "Future containers"? you ask. Those are large yogurt or cottage cheese cartons I plan to use next season. Also turned the compost in the large bin outside a bit. And put another row on a crochet table scarf.

Sunny day yesterday but quite cool. We got errands done but not much else. The temperature at the moment is 45F and supposed to rise to about 70. We should have a stretch of three sunny days so garden clean up is on my agenda. I have some bubble wrap I intend to use on the clematis to provide some winter protection.

Busy day just cleaning up outside after the hard rains of the last few days. The bird feeder was a grungy mess. I washed it thoroughly, including taking it apart, and put it out in the shed to dry till tomorrow. Cleaned out the dish on the bird bath so they also have clean water. Also swept most of the patio, moved three of the 5-gal containers into their position for next year--I hope. I might change my mind but for now the matter is settled. I also transferred the remaining salt from the bulk container to a gallon juice container I cleaned out for that purpose. The old container was tossed in the trash. I considered keeping it but I don't have a use for it--now or in the near future. We won't be getting salt in the quantity that would fill the big container. We just finished the 50# of salt we got in the fall of 2012--after that monstrous snow storm of January. Needless to say--that was a bit excessive.

We had quite a light and drum show last night--lightening and thunder with really heavy rain. I can't remember another autumn with such hard rains. There seems to be a lot more moisture in the air which makes me wonder about what the winter will bring. The weather people predict more of the same today. Much too wet to do anything outside so I will do some stitching. I found two stamped embroidery pieces that aren't cross stitch. One was a pattern I completed on another piece some time ago so I decided to start the other one. Mom and I like many of the same things and we found duplicates when we combined our households. We gave most of the cookware and appliance duplicates (which often involved the same brands) to relatives. However, few of our relatives do much needlework.

I like this piece from Mock Paper Scissors--a lot.

I cleared out the chocolate mint yesterday and the mosquito plant. That latter I won't plant again. I did this year just to see what it would do. We have never had many mosquitos and fewer bugs I didn't want around than in previous years. I am watching the temperatures so that I can make sure the clematis is protected before any hard freeze hits (I hope). I won't be doing anything outside today (I think) because we had heavy rain just before dawn and the beds are soaked. We are supposed to have thunderstorms today but for the moment the sun is coming up. How long before more clouds come in I can't even begin to say. So far the plants I have brought inside are doing well--especially the lemon verbena and the hibiscus. The hibiscus stopped blooming but I expected that with the much lower light level. The light we have is still enough to keep it green and putting out new leaves.

Right now we have a monsoonal style deluge outside. The weather people said we would have thunderstorms and, for once, they were right. Though I wondered because we had several nice sunny interludes.

It looks like the for profit prison industry isn't the only ones wanting to keep their cells filled. This (expletive) sheriff in Louisiana is pissed because reforms in the state's criminal justice system will release the "good" prisoners he uses in his modern iteration of a chain gang. I linked to Raw Story but my Google search showed a variety of mainstream sources for the same thing: Some of the headlines drew the obvious parallel to "slavery."

The California wild fires have now become the deadliest in the state's history. This has been an almost unimaginable year for disaster starting with #45's inauguration. Then along came Harvey, Irma, and Marie followed by the fires. One of the headlines was, I think unintentionally, ironic. It noted that the blistering hot summer following a very wet winter has fueled the fires. I remember when everyone was celebrating the heavy, larger than normal snow pack and the the wet spring because the drought receded from extreme to merely moderate or abnormally dry.

We had intermittent rain yesterday and cool temps so I watered the plants downstairs and did a bit more cross-stitching and crochet. It is cool again today and cloudy. So far today Mom has put together one of our "kitchen sink" pasta salads which will cool in the fridge till tomorrow. Today is left overs from yesterday: pork chops, acorn squash and corn on the cob. I am about take out a loaf of yogurt/molasses/rye quick bread. I did ours with cherries and walnuts.

While the bread baked I watered the upstairs plants and fertilized them, tidied up one of my junk shelves. I have gotten better about such spaces--there are fewer and fewer of them. Part of that is that we have fewer and fewer things that seem to wander from their usual places and we are better about putting those back where they belong. I also got the bird feeder and its surrounding area on the table/potting bench cleaned up and the feeder refilled. They are happy. About six or so have already visited.

I may do some more stitching but I have had a bit of an itch to do something other than cross stitch. I don't know if I have anything other than cross stitch in my stash. I have to check that out.

Of course, I am still reading interesting items like this one. "Kakistocracy" sounds about right.

When we bought new phones and switched to a much lower cost carrier, we told the salesperson we preferred "dumb" phones. As it is our phones are a bit smarter than we wanted but they are much closer to the original phones that functioned as a verbal communication device not a miniature computer that can surf the internet, text, and play media etc. The salesman simply laughed. We don't tweet, go on pinterest, or most other social media sites. Our TV is usually only half an hour a day though Mom uses Netflix daily. It seems we aren't the only ones who control and limit exposure to social media. When software engineers do it, you have to look at the situation more carefully.

We had rain most of the night, often hard enough to rouse me a bit. The wind also was high and I could hear the wind chimes tinkling through closed the closed window. I think it will be too wet to work in the dirt today and, maybe, tomorrow. I am not in much of a hurry to get the rest of the beds clear. I can chip away at that project until the ground freezes.

As I go along I am making up my seed/plant orders. I want to get a couple of them in by December because the last couple of years some of the seeds I wanted were already out of stock by the time I ordered in late January. Mom has made a request that I plant more strawberries because we bought frozen last grocery run and the price was somewhat shocking. The bare root strawberries we got from Burpee did surprisingly well and had a really good flavor. Surprising because I wondered if they would produce at all and then, as summer gave way to fall, many of the plants suddenly bloomed and produced large, succulent berries. Not enough to take all of our needs but, if I can encourage more plants to gives berries in the same number, enough to put a dent in our purchases. I have a few ideas that might make for an interesting season next year.

It is cool right now with some overcast. The weather report said we should get rain this afternoon--a 40% chance they say so maybe, maybe not. We'll see. I just finished grinding a nice supply of egg shells. I add them to the gardens--especially the peppers, tomatoes and eggplant. A blogger (sorry, I forgot which one and it was some time ago) calls eggshells "slow release calcium." I am for anything that uses something we would normally throw away to grow something we can eat.

Yesterday was another foray into the "adventures of shopping." I don't call it "consumerism" since we aren't the mindless consumers who open their wallets and reach for the cards at the drop of a suggestion the commercial powers that be would like us to be. We generally know what we want and, usually, know where to find it. Over the last year or so that has become somewhat of a problem. Part of that situation is simply we have gone retro in so many ways. I think I have already described our shift back to cast iron cookware because we became utterly disgusted with the performance of the so-called non-stick cookware we had been using for the last fifteen or so years. After we started trying to find the skillets and such we suddenly found the local Target began carrying a line of Lodge cast iron. We had already bought from Lodge direct on-line. At the same time we have gone from the usual shower jells and shampoos to Dove bar soap and a couple of lines of "natural" shampoos till, just recently, to old fashioned castile soap. That last has been the best so far for our skins and hair.

Well, the bankruptcy of our main grocery outlets (owned by the same company despite the different names) has sent us off searching for the products and/or brands we use. Though the stores never closed, unlike another nearby store, we suddenly couldn't find lard, Fage yogurt, and a few other mainstays. I will admit that we can be very picky. If we can't get the Fage in the full 4% fat variety or the 2% (if absolutely necessary), we will do without. Yesterday we did our usual grocery shopping and found that the store here still didn't have the yogurt, the lard and a few other items we wanted. So we decided go a bit further afield and check out a store we had talked about but hadn't been in since the (local) chain opened a new store in a closer neighboring town. Surprise--we found everything there. And at comparable or cheaper prices.

Result--we are changing our shopping patterns. We buy multiples of our most frequently used items. The number of multiples depends on how much we use them. Whole wheat and all-purpose flour--we keep two five pound bags in addition to what is in our canister and get a new one when we empty a reserve bag into the canister. Corn meal and rye flour--one reserve. With that system we can easily keep a list and shop maybe twice a month. Milk and orange juice we can buy between regular shopping.

Once upon a time the big box stores promised us "one stop shopping. Only for those who aren't at all picky about what they are getting.

An excellent piece by Andrew Bacevich at Tomdispatch. More than a decade ago I basically disavowed many of the actions of the Federal government in the only ways I could and can--by voting and proclaiming as loudly as I can that what is being done is not in my name or with my consent. My participation in voting does not automatically mean I agree with what is done by those who win the election merely that I have to live with whatever atrocity they perpetrate and more frequently of late the result has been atrocity not benefit. I have long wondered whether voting is worth the bother. I don't vicariously participate in the winning or the losing. The results don't stroke my ego or shatter my soul. I wonder if Bacevich shouldn't have included another point although he bounced off of it earlier in the piece. McNamara's thought may indeed have become reality and the powers that be no longer need to focus public anger to prosecute a war. Instead it is more useful to focus public anger on internal "enemies" like blacks, women, gays, Muslims, illegal immigrants. Afghanistan is so far away and how many Afghans have you met lately? How do we get out of perpetual war when public awareness of it is so faint and we don't even recognize its impacts on us? By the way, notice Englehardt's discussion of the linguistics that mask the reality of war. Words do matter and all the words used by our leaders and our media mask that reality.

Came across this and it started some wheels turning in my mind. The answer the senator gave to the question in the clip echoes a sentiment expressed by the CEO of Nestle sometime in the last year when his company was engaged in a battle with local people over the local water supply. He claimed that water was simply another commodity which should be for sale to the highest bidder--in other words, no one has a "right" to water unless one can pay for it. The senator claimed that we do have rights--to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and, of course, to freedom. To which I would ask: if we have a right to life (the first right on the list), how could we not have a right to those things that are absolutely necessary to the continuation of life? There is a rule among the survival/prepper groups--the "rule of three." You can live three minutes without air, three hours in a hostile environment without adequate shelter (I would add clothing to that), three days without water, and three weeks without food. What good is your right to life if you don't also have a right to those things that are absolutely necessary to maintain life? As for "freedom"--well Janis Joplin sang "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." The question that prompted the senator's asinine answer had to to with a "right to medical care." The question should be: what level of health care? To say "none at all" is to basically tell most people that they simply don't matter and we don't care whether they live or die. If we go along with that notion then we aren't a society but a gaggle of beasts engaged in what Thomas Hobbs called a "war of all against all" in which there are no true winners.

I am so glad #45 approved an emergency declaration for Mississippi--before Hurricane Nate even made landfall. Considering how slow he and his administration were on Puerto Rico, I guess this is an improvement. But it smacks to me of someone who desperately wants approval for himself.

Spearmint is ground and in the appropriate jar on the shelf. Chocolate mint--the last for the season--and some lavender (collected so I could fill the dehydrator) are drying now. I hadn't any real plan for the day but managed to do the herbs and to put a few stitches in a cross-stitch piece I have been working, on and off--mostly off, for a very, very long time. Oh, well. As the seasons change the itch to do needlework gets stronger.

As the mornings seem to come later and later I have gotten started later and later. In high summer we usually start our coffee about 4:30 or 5 am. Today we didn't get our first cup until almost 6. I can understand why a blogger I read last year looked forward to the time change when light would come earlier in the morning even though darkness would also come earlier in the evening. Her kids had to wait for a school bus near a busy road at a bit of a distance from her house. Not a safe proposition for a number of reasons. It rained well last night and we expect more all day today and tomorrow. No gardening till Sunday when we should have sun and dry conditions again. Well I have things to straighten out in the planting/craft/storage room.

Every now and then Fr. Dwight Longenecker has an interesting column. This one precipitated quite a discussion here at our house. He brings in the statistics on the rising suicide rate among white, middle aged or elderly men and tries to connect it to the Las Vegas mass murder. I could also bring in the rising drug overdose rate and opioid addiction rates that show an overlap in the category of white, middle aged or elderly men. A basic question: if this reaction is from a creeping and growing despair, what is driving the despair and is that a problem we have the resources and will to solve? And then I wonder why aren't more white, middle aged or elderly men succumbing to opiates, or to suicide or committing mass murder in this, admittedly, depressing society?

Time Magazine has a slightly different take which is also interesting and not necessarily at odds with the Longenecker piece.

Did get some gardening done. Basically cleaning out a couple of my 5-gal. buckets. I harvested spearmint before clearing those buckets. That is now drying. Got one of the peppermint buckets cleaned out also. Those three containers wore me out so I will wait until tomorrow when, I hope, I will harvest the last of the chocolate mint and clean it up as well--along with the other peppermint and the lemon balm. I will leave the lavender to last because the bees are having a grand time buzzing around that pot.

So Black Friday is becoming a ghost of its former self. Good thing I would say. I never participated in the commercial/consumerist frenzy but I do have relatives who used to plan their Black Fridays as though they were generals going to war. Now if we could only see a similar decline in other commercial "holidays."

I have a lot of reservations (if not downright antipathy) about industrial food production. Just this morning I read of a large recall of ground turkey products because of possible contamination with metal fragments. Sorry I didn't note the site. It is sad in a way that, to me anyway, that I now think of a recall of 300,000+ pounds of ground meat as simply "large" and not huge. This little piece from the Guardian is titled "Goodbye--and Good Riddance--to Livestock Farming". I don't think any more of this author's stance than I do industrial farming or food production. The industrial system reduces all "inputs," whether animate or inanimate, to mere numbers on a balance sheet. The abuse he mentions is embedded in the system. My grandparents had a small, mixed crop farm for most of my childhood and adolescence. I can assure you that their animals were well cared for with numbers limited to what well rotated pastures would support. I once owned horses and, with others, had the great misfortune of renting land from an absentee farmer who over grazed the land horribly. He made it difficult for us to maintain our horses in healthy condition but we did manage it. I read blogs written by small farmers and homesteaders who write about their animals and all of them pay close attention to maintaining a number of animals their land can support and making sure the pastures are not overgrazed. The pollution problems he mentions come from overgrazing and/or from feedlot operations both of which are encouraged by the industrial agriculture system. And switching to faux meat soy products won't solve problems. Soy is grown in monocultures with generous applications of chemical fertilizers and pesticides (which adds to pollution) and which require plowing and cultivation which result in the loss of a lot of topsoil each year. And since he notes that he can't tell the difference between "quorn" based minced or faux chicken, I will note that I really don't want to eat a macerated vegetable product treated with chemicals to create the texture of meat and flavored with what ever chemicals will simulate the taste. I don't know if I would be able to tell the difference but--and this is key--I don't care if I couldn't tell the difference. I don't want the chemically adulterated imitation "foods" the industry produces and am busily getting rid of them in my life.

I thought it was interesting that #45 said, while in Puerto Rico, that the Puerto Rican debt would have to be cancelled but I take everything interesting or sensible he says with a big dose of salt--enough to endanger my blood pressure. All too often those sensible mumblings are refuted soon after and that appears to be the case here.

Politico has a good summary of the U.S. response to hurricane damaged destroyed Puerto Rico. I think the story confirms my own summation. We responded differently to Puerto Rico because it was "too poor and too dark (as in brown)." Our government responded more effectively to Texas and Florida because the residents were wealthier and more white. And five years from now both areas will be whiter and the wealthier areas will be largely rebuilt while the darker areas languish. Look at post-Katrina New Orleans.

Woke this morning to the news from Las Vegas. I won't link because it is all over both broadcast and internet news sites. We turned on the TV to get what was known (not much yet) and then fairly quickly turned it off again when the anchors and "experts" started speculating on motive. Religion came up fairly quickly followed by Islam and ISIS. No facts support the speculation (as if conjecture requires fact) but I find it revealing and disgusting that, in this context, religion, Islam, and IS (or sometimes Al Qaeda) are linked as tightly as the Father-Son-Holy Ghost triad. But, of course, there is no mention of the possibility that religious motives might involve so-called Christians. I was surprised by how unsurprised I was.

Nor am I surprised that the strident voices for more gun control have already erupted. One title asked if we were "for" the NRA or the USA. I won't link because you can find the article yourself easily. The article progressed in the usual pattern: focus on the carnage, on the tragic deaths and woundings, then move onto the screed about the NRA and couch the argument in terms where one's loyalties should lie. My loyalties do not lie with the NRA but with the Constitution of the USA. You can argue on what the Second Amendment means and we have argued in court case after court case for years. However, until our legislators and president decide to approve a Constitutional amendment that either rescinds the Second Amendment entirely or changes it significantly it is still the law of the land, of the USA.