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.