We had rain overnight and expect more today. The temperatures should turn colder but not mid-winter sub-freezing cold. I hope the predictions are right because I think I saw some leaf buds on the clematis which I mulched as much as a large pot on a cement patio can be mulched. I am only about a week away from starting the tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. Yikes!!! I have to get the planting space cleared so I can do that. We are still sorting and rearranging stuff. That has been an ongoing project this month that is now ending. The last two days were spent in errands and other tasks that needed doing but today--with one minor errand--we will go back to the sorting and rearranging.

I have seen several stories of people trying to cut plastics out of their lives. Queen Elizabeth is even getting on that bandwagon banning plastics in the tourist concession areas of her palaces. Recently I saw an article in a UK paper where a reporter was challenged on how easily he could remove plastic from his life. (Sorry I didn't save the link and can't find it now.) He thought it would be easy since he, himself, didn't use much plastics having shifted to a metal water bottle for his jogs and took his lunch in a non-plastic microwaveable container and taken other measures to replace plastics. But that was only part of his life. The other part included a family with two children under three--one in the process of toilet training and one still in diapers (plastic lined nappies as he called them.) Getting rid of plastics in the family sphere would have been very difficult. Nimue Brown has a nice post on the subject and comes to a similar conclusion: removing plastic from her life would be difficult and expensive. We have discovered the same. Almost everything comes plastic wrapped or in plastic containers--and most of that is single use. We have a collection of canvas bags and have reduced the plastic bags we accumulate  and those we use to line trash cans and for the spent cat litter. We use far few plastic containers and those we use till they are totally unusable. But we still put out, when we aren't clearing up and sorting out, one trash tote for pick up every three weeks to a month. and most of it is that so convenient plastic.

Capitalism colonizing time? The article on Naked Capitalism makes a good argument that is exactly what has been happening. We are reduced to two modes: wealth producers (though not so much for ourselves) or wealth consumers (which takes what little we make and puts it in someone else's pocket.) Time for anything not fitting those categories is increasingly squeezed out. I would add a point: time spent producing for our own consumption is marginalized. First, finding the time for it in today's economy is difficult and, second, our economic calculations minimize its value. Last summer we bought 2 25lb boxes of canning tomatoes (one box per week for two weeks) and canned them for our own use. Those boxes yielded 23 quart jars for about six hours of work for the two of us. Those jars are (approximately) the equivalent of 50 cans of commercially processed tomatoes. Those 50 cans cost around $3.00 each or $150. The boxes cost a total of $24. Our time hardly enters the calculation since both of us are retired no one pays us for our labor. But, the 50 cans of commercial product would have added $150 to the GDP while our home canned added only $24. The same goes for the herbs and veggies I plant in our small garden. Only the seeds or plants we buy and other purchased inputs enter the economic calculation. The mature herbs and vegetables don't because we consume them here. At the highest pay I ever earned I would have had to work 3 days to buy those commercial tomatoes. We live in one of the "cracks" in the capitalist/industrial system but we do so only because we are retired. When I was still slaving away at low paid jobs and desperately trying to find a way out of them, it was almost impossible to see around a system of working for a pittance producing profits for someone else and spending that pittance to consume what ever it took to continue producing the profits someone else enjoyed. I have often said that our system expects us to work ourselves to death to not make a living.

We should have another beautiful day today. One of my slow to drain pots finally did drain. After everything thaws out it us fine for the rest of the season. Some of the pots are still frozen but others are thawing nicely. I hope I can start digging soon, getting them ready to plant. I don't do that until around middle May and, even then, may put cloches over the seedlings. I have one big container to take out--it is cracked. I have already decided not to replace it. I have other ideas for that space.

I read this piece by Patrice Lewis over the weekend which has stuck in my mind. I don't normally read WND but she links from her blog at Rural Revolution. She quotes from Tim Wu's New York Times editorial which I haven't read because the Times puts everything behind a pay wall. He writes that the notion "convenience" is based on the "nightmare" of physical work and questions whether we should think of physical work as a nightmare or wish to be liberated from it. He makes a good point and Lewis makes several more. I think that depends entirely on what kind of work we mean. So much "convenience" promises to free up time for other things--things that either pays us or things we enjoy but don't pursue as much as we wish because we are either engaged in the work that pays for our lives or the work we have to do to sustain our lives but don't get paid for. Unless we are affluent enough to pay someone to cook for us, clean for us, watch our children for us, grow (pick, process, and transport) our food for us, we are stuck doing it for ourselves. But that that work is, in our society, low status and poorly paid or not paid at all (unless you are a celebrity chef or some one similar). What Lewis did was reframe the story so that her physical labor was not something she was stuck with but something which liberated her from a "normal" life she found more nightmarish.

Number 45's proposal to provide "food boxes" in place of half of the SNAP benefits poor people receive gets a scathing reception from people who know just how that works: Native Americans. Many of them have received something similar since 1977 and the results for general health are really, really not good.

And on a different really, really not good topic check out the heatwave in the Arctic. Yeah, "heatwave" is my word but what else do you call it when the temperature is 50F above normal?

Naked Capitalism has a post which resonates with me: Time To Stand Up for Dumb. Yes, I am typing this on a lap top computer, and I have a tablet also. I do use e-books but it is a matter of convenience, real convenience not the kind of convenience mentioned above. We don't have a lot of space for print books so the 1000 or so on the tablet split between nook and Kindle saves a hell of a lot of space. Besides I can try some new authors for a small price compared to the hard copies. We don't use and don't want any GPS service--too costly and we use printed maps. Nor do we want our fridge telling us what we are out of or ordering anything on its own for delivery. Our paper grocery list is good enough. I could go on but you get the idea. Time to stand up for dumb? Not really. Time to give our tech some thought and adopt what will do the job for us in our circumstances. And have a back up just in case something (or someone) happens to make the tech inoperative.

We have a beautiful day today. The temperature is heading for the mid 50s (F) and the sun is shining brightly in a totally clear sky. We didn't get any flooding here but areas around us did. Well east of us it was really bad.

This story surprised me but not really. Number 45's personal pilot is on the short list for heading the FAA. From the story the man does have a varied background but what comes across is that the most important factor is his relationship to #45. Whether or not a pilot could run things so that tarmac delays become a thing of the past is questionable. This is an excellent example of what happens when you don't thing government really matters and that everything should be run like a family business.

So perhaps #45 is mind-linked with Duterte--the Philippines strongman who believes in executing suspected criminals before a trial and that troops should be allowed to rape female suspects. Politics of fear par excellence. Though the story says he cites Singapore's low drug use the attitudes are more reminiscent of Duterte who isn't mentioned in the story.

I think we had a bit of fog this morning. I think I saw that foggy glow from the lights across the street. We had a repairman from our landlord come by yesterday to fix a couple of things and guys from Salvation Army stopped to pick up a bunch of serviceable items we no longer needed. We are still in our "once in a blue moon" cleaning project. I guess we are about halfway through the junk room which is gradually going back to organized storage/sewing/craft/plant room status.

Ah, Margaret and Helen are back and caustic as ever.

John Feffer posted an interesting article on what unites #45 and the foreign leaders he has become tight with over the last year: majoritarianism. Pay very close attention to the definition because it isn't a simple "one man, one vote" idea. He also mentions the concept of a tyranny of the majority about which the Founding Fathers had nothing good to say.

Cloudy, cold and wet. We got the freezing rain last night and the temperatures are supposed to stay in the 30s today and 40s for the next 4 or 5 days. Winter is reminding us it is still around.

I did a double take on the title of this article and found that the content was not what I expected. I have gotten used to seeing articles that blame Boomers and older people for the economic mess which nobody has any notion of how to fix (we supposedly consumed so much so mindlessly), for destroying the environment with our throw-away consumerist behavior, for getting sick and consuming too many medical services and drugs, etc. The actual point the author tried to make is that the term "senior citizen" should be discontinued because it implies that old people are somehow separate from/different from "normal" people. It helps support the picture of old people as somehow deviating from the normal in an undesirable way, experience a creeping decrepitude that pervades every aspect of life. People, all people, age. No one escapes. "Senior Citizen" has become a euphemism that obscures that natural process.

More rain today and with bouts of monsoon intensity. We have had rivers running down our streets, front and back. But the drains are functioning very well so nothing is threatening the houses. The temperature was 60F when we woke so much of the snow is gone now. We have another day of house cleaning, sorting and re-arranging to do.We have a pile of goods waiting for the SalvationArmy to pick up.

Longreads posted this article which hits a button for me given the long years I spent in various academic history roles. I just tossed a whole bunch of zip disks because they are formatted for a machine I had four computers back and the information was entered using a program which the programs I now use can't read. Several bloggers I regularly read spent some time reviewing their electronic information and printing out the most important items just in case the electronics failed or became corrupted or whatever.

Rainy today but that should wash away some of that snow that remains. It is also very foggy with our visibility down to, maybe, a block. Shopping done so we are warm and dry.

Found this by way of Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By. The Parody Project does the Twelve Months of Trump's Mess (Sung to The Twelve Days of Christmas.)

Dutch News posted an interesting story about drug companies and drug costs. A health care institute suggests that insurance companies should refuse to pay for expensive drugs as long as the companies fail justify their prices in a transparent manner. Simply citing "costs" of development isn't enough.

Got about an inch or a bit more of heavy wet snow yesterday. It is already melting off the cars, grass, and pavements. We are supposed to have warmer temps over the next week or so. Well, March is almost here and I am about three weeks away from first planting.

Another round of rearranging, stacking for donations and pitching. We will continue tomorrow. Even after the major effort is done I have a whole bunch of sorting to do with what is left.

This Nature post doesn't really surprise me. We have moved away from most aerosol sprays of any kind though it is surprising how hard it is to find the cleaning supplies without propellent sprays. We have also gone to more basic cleaning supplies: basic soaps without the additives and in bar form often, white vinegar, etc.

So--the Canadians also have a student loan problem.  I think the problem is in the basic shift to loans and away from grants, scholarships and such, coupled with the rising costs of higher education which puts paying out of pocket out of reach. I wish student loans in this country were taken care of in bankruptcy but they aren't.

Unfortunately, crappy ideas seem to spread rapidly. China's experiment with a "social credit system" whereby your worth is not only calculated by your income, net worth, wealth and popularity but by how well behaved you are judged, I am sure, in such a way as to discourage protest and unconventionality. Germany is thinking of trying something similar. How soon will it be tried here?

We are still in the middle of a general clean up and culling of "stuff." We will probably be at it, with a day off for rest and/or shopping/errands, for the next week or so. We came here almost 18 years ago with what we each kept from separate apartment and house, and crammed it into a two bedroom town house. Since then the pattern of our lives have changed and what we do (and how we do it) have also changed. Somehow going through all this and either throwing away or giving away or donating so much feels worse that the "big 0" birthdays that remind one of how much older one is getting. I believe I had mentioned that my needlework stash had gone SABLE (Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy) a long time ago and I am now engaged in small projects that will use it up while trying to restrain myself from adding to it. I came here with somewhere around 10k books but that has been whittled down to maybe 1000. I usually do my reading on my iPad now (after resisting e-books for a number of years.) We are following a basic rule on most of the stuff: if you haven't used it (or read it, or viewed it) in the past couple of years, get rid of it.

Well, it seems the number of school shootings I cited the other day is in question--justifiably as this piece at Snopes points out. The number cited, 18 for this year, includes any discharge of a weapon in or at a school whether in session or not for any reason at all (or no known reason). It seems that the devil is indeed in the details (or definition.) However, in my not so humble opinion, reducing it from 18 to the 7 in Snopes first breakout section still results in far too many. In fact, ONE would have been way too many.

Still on that subject check this out at Crooks & Liars. Like gratitude, "thoughts and prayers" are worth their weight in gold. If more congress critters got donation checks reflecting that perhaps something might get done.

Windypundit has some good comments on the proposed changes to SNAP. Another site (sorry, forgot to make not of which) mentioned the changes making food assistance an exercise in humiliation.

The snow piles are much reduced for which I am glad. I like to dump my coffee grounds and expended tea leaves in the gardens directly and hadn't been able to for a week as the snow was piled high atop the pots and containers. But it is turning colder again for a few days.

Found this article which indicates a shift in kitchens to reflect the growing number of men who are cooking now. The cynical joke Mom and I often uttered in looking at kitchen designs was the men who don't cook designed them for women who do and they simply didn't work well. But now that men are cooking the designers are actually listening. Glory Be!!

I read sometime ago that tomatoes won't set fruit above 95F which explained why I had decreased yields after our usual mid summer heatwaves. Peppers and eggplant seemed to have a similar problem. Even if the temperature in the general area didn't reach that level my little micro-environment on the patio easily did. Just this morning I found this article which indicates our hotter conditions (all but one of the first 18 years of this century were on the list of the warmest ever) may indicate problems for corn as well. It doesn't reproduce above 95F. I got curious about the effects of higher temperatures on other crops and found this article.

Rain and fog today which should take out more snow out. I have about a month before I start my peppers, tomatoes and eggplant and I still haven't firmed up my new garden map. We are still in house cleaning mode. Still have some of the downstairs to do but I think sorting out the storage jars is my first priority. We started getting honey in quart and pint jars--the good canning kind--sometime ago and added to that with some we purchased when I started doing our own pickled and canned tomatoes. But now the stocks are way above what we need for canning and other storage needs. Plus we kept a number of nice little fruit and jelly jars to keep small amounts of herbs and such we grow and dry for tea and cooking. Those have also multiplied way beyond our needs. I can be a pack rat on some things but the time has come to lock my inner packrat in a closet and pitch a bunch of stuff.

We have a tendency to look at something and think we might use it some time. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. We are now sorting out the "Don't" category for redistribution elsewhere--Goodwill, where ever. I am always amazed when we go through these clean-up/sort-out frenzies how much shit stuff we collect over time. It isn't really useless crap. It just didn't work out or isn't working now for what ever reason.

I found this piece this morning which parallels my own feelings well. I mentioned before on various posts that I am more than a little irritated by several phrases that have become so expected and so meaningless but are trotted out in certain circumstances. "Thoughts and prayers" ranks very high on my list of hated phrases. It implies a compassion and sympathy which isn't really superficial (if even that), cheap because it requires no action or sacrifice on the part of the person offering "thoughts and prayers," and signifies a religious sentiment (prayers) that is just a cheap and superficial as the compassion and sympathy. It lasts only the few seconds to say.

So--school shooting #18 since the beginning of the year that is less only a month and a half old. We were, as usual, perplexed (WHY??) and--hmmm, "saddened" doesn't begin describe the emotion. We haven't really become accustomed or hardened by these stories that are almost a daily occurrence. But we don't have any control of the situation especially after the event. However, in addition, we felt a real tinge of irritation yesterday. The only thing, ONLY thing, on TV yesterday when we turned the set on for our usual hour of Jeopardy and news was continuous coverage of the shooting aftermath. I could summarize the coverage at 3:30 quickly: There has been a shooting at a high school in Florida with several victims and the shooter is still at large. That is all we know at present. But the coverage had wonderful (sarcasm!!) pictures from the helicopter of the students streaming out and the police in swat gear moving in, totally meaningless and emotional interviews with frightened parents and students, interviews with witnesses who may or may not have seen something or just heard shots (or something.) When we checked the news at 4:00 they didn't have much to add except an initial report of casualties that was sure to change shortly. Same at 5:00--oh, yeah: shooter in custody. Most of the coverage was meaningless crap with ZERO information value. By the way, that was the second day of extended coverage of a shooting. On Tuesday a policeman was shot in Chicago and the same mix of nuggets of information (street closures affecting commuters) and meaningless chaff. But it was continuous coverage from about 3pm on.

I found this list of school shootings in the U.S. from the 17th century forward on Wikipedia which is a bit frightening. The list shows 28 incidents for the 19th century, 226 for the 20th century, and 212 for the current century which is only at the beginning of its 18th year. I wonder if we will tie or surpass the 20th century tally before this year is out?

Happy Valentine's Day to all from this grumpy old broad. Supposed to be warmer today. I hope so. I want some of that white stuff outside to melt. I get tired of even mild winters very quickly.

We have been in major house cleaning/decluttering mode since Sunday with Monday off for shopping. I have often said that we clean when the spirit moves us and, thankfully, it doesn't move often. Actually that has been the case only since our last cats died of very old age between 2011 and 2013. The political situation has been a bit depressing as well. The new cats have changed that and given our lives a very needed shaking up. Things we had been thinking of doing in a rather lackadaisical way are now getting done. In the process we are getting rid of a bunch of stuff and rearranging where everything else is put to make it more accessible when we need it. Right now I am stiff and tired.

       Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By has a post on the Ivanka/Rubio proposal to allow people to access Social Security funds for family leaves to care for a new born or sick family member and then delay retirement by a commensurate time (six weeks delayed Social Security in retirement for six weeks of family leave now). Rather than providing what every other advanced nation on earth provides our Repthuglican politicians would rather shovel more money to a military already vastly over funded. They are grasping for any wedge to destroy a program their ilk have wanted to destroy for the last 80 years and from which so many have benefitted.
        But another thought came into my mind as I read this and other articles on the proposal. It reminds me of the "Cash For Clunkers" program in the early days of the Great Recession when the automakers were crying poverty, laying off workers, and wanting a bail out from Washington in the face of fierce opposition. The government funded hefty rebates for customers who traded in their older model car ( I think the car had to be pre-1996 or thereabouts) for a new car. It was sold in part as an environmental and fuel saving measure: the new cars were cleaner burning and got better gas mileage--or so the story went. A lot of the new cars consumers bought were SUVs that were only more fuel efficient by comparison to older SUV models not the sedans or smaller vehicles many people were driving.
      A (usually) unstated goal was to move consumption from two or three years down the road (when they hoped the economy would be recovering) to the present (when it was in a deepening recession). Well, the economy didn't improve so after a bit of an upswing the auto industry continued its slide. And the used car market took a big hit because all those trade-ins had to be rendered inoperable while people who couldn't buy a new car even with the rebates and other incentives couldn't buy a used car either as scarcity drove up prices.
      We have been involved in a desperate attempt (individually as well as collectively) to claw future income/revenue/assets into the present to fuel consumption now and the Ivanka/Rubio plan just goes after even more distant (potential resources). I say "potential" because the same people proposing this cockamamie scheme keep telling us that Social Security is going broke a lot sooner than when the 30 and 40 somethings who would be accessing the funds will be looking to retire.

This puts our 9 straight days of measurable snow amounting to 18-20 inches with mountains of plowed snow in some perspective.

Sunny today but still cold. No more snow for a while. Maybe, with warmer temps and rain tomorrow and Thursday, some of the white mountains will disappear but I expect some of this will be around till April.

Saw this this morning. I have two thoughts: anther goddam attempt for faux-conservative moralists to micromanage the poor and another goddam way for private business to fatten at the public expense. Let the looting continue.

Infidel753 posted an interesting piece on the controversy brewing over the census. Yesterday the administration's nominee to run the census in 2020 withdrew after fierce opposition. The Justice Department told the Census Bureau they wanted a question as to the responder's citizenship. And I remember being irritated by the intrusive nature of the questions last time. I hadn't gotten to the point of refusing to answer--but for how much longer??

The weekend was busy with digging out from between 12 and 16 inches of snow over three or four days. We had a dusting more over night but the temperature has dropped like a rock into the single digits. But, as usual, a warm up is predicted with rain which will make short work of a good bit of the snow. Not, of course, the mountains that were plowed from the streets, driveways and sidewalks.

In addition we were engaged in some housework. Laundry on Saturday and then some dusting and rearranging on Sunday. Some of that because of the addition of two young cats just before Christmas. Our last three were mature when we set up here--5 to 7 years old. These are only 1 and 3 years old so there is a lot of kitten left in them. One is a climber and a scratcher and both are fascinated by the large hibiscus. They are both stubborn as the proverbial mule so scaring them, shooing them and lightly smacking them didn't work. I think we may have licked most of the problem. I spray the hibiscus with a lemon juice/water solution and we have been dusting our shelves with orange Pledge. They don't like citrus. I have also rubbed the woodwork panel she liked to scratch on with the pledge which has also worked--so far.

I plan more dusting and rearranging today. I need to look over the herbs I dried last fall and dispose of some. We simply don't use them. That will give me an idea of what I won't plant again and what I should plant more of because we do use them. I cut back on sage last year but we are out--partly because our jar fell out of the spice cabinet when Mom was looking for a different herb. She makes up her own spice/herb blends many of which use sage.

This article is no surprise. For anyone surprised I suggest the read Hitler's Willing Executioners and
Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem where she coined the phrase "banality of evil." The old saying holds that for evil to thrive it only needs good people to keep silent.

We did get sun yesterday but don't expect to see it again till after Sunday. We got a good bit of snow overnight. Hope we don't get as much as they say we might. We always seem to be on the edge of systems that dump on areas nearby.

The Dutch are getting wise and advising parents that they shouldn't discourage their children from attending vocational schools. They are, evidently, fighting strong biases which see the schools as parking grounds for academic failures, etc. I would like to see our education system go in that direction.

Longreads had this on its feed this morning.  I preferred the title the Longreads people put on their page linking to the NY Times piece: The Placeless and The Privileged. The description of ROAM reminds me of a cross between a posh gated community and hotels like Embassy Suites the cater to business travelers who want a bit more luxury. I shouldn't be surprised since most of our very wealthy and big corporations have become rootless and without any sense of loyalty to any given place. But perhaps rootlessness is a more widespread reality than we think. I have been nibbling at a book titled Nomadland detailing itinerant workers (often older but retired with low incomes) who go from campground and job to campground and job throughout the year.

Overcast so far though my weather site promised sun today. Well, maybe but not at the moment. We expect more snow over the weekend--5 or 6 inches possibly. Winter sure roared back after that nice little interlude where we had a couple of days that actually touched 60. However, we always seem to find weather events that make us thankful we are here and not there. Moscow had a record snowfall that triggered a rare "snow day" and cancelled flights

Found this excellent piece reacting to #45's desire for a military parade. Mom read a piece yesterday in which the Mayor of D.C. told them that he can pay for it himself because the city didn't have the money. I had read somewhere last month that they are still trying to collect the promised money to cover the cost of the inauguration.

No sun and more snow. Mom cleaned off about three inches on the car and patio. The rest on the sidewalk is our landlord's problem. The forecast for the next week (clouds with frequent snow showers) make us very glad we got out yesterday--though we realized, as we thought about it, we could have gone well into next week with what we had on hand. However, taking advantage of the relatively good weather gives us more of a buffer. We like that flexibility.

John Michael Greer has a good piece on Ecosophia today arising out of his post from which he received a lot of push back.

For some time now I have argued that the solution to the $1.4trillion sword of Damocles called student debt was to 1) cancel all of the debt and 2) not issue any new student loans--especially those backed by government guarantees. Ives Smith at Naked Capitalism features a new study which claims that cancelling all of the student debt will have large positive consequences personally for the borrowers and for the economy generally with few downsides.

I read this quip to Mom. Her response: what do you mean "might?" Maha has a number of succinct and appropriate comments on #45's desire for a "military" parade.

We woke to sun and about 3 inches of fresh snow. The early weather report predicted more snow today and clouds so we waited to see what would actually materialize.  So nice we decided to go ahead and do our grocery shopping. We could have waited till next week if we had to.

I keep wondering how idiotic the evangelical wingnuts can be and then another competitor for the first prize in the idiocy sweepstakes comes along. And then there is the parallel competition among government operatives. Kellyanne Conway so far leads a tight field with her notion that a border wall and a Just Say No campaign will do anything to fix the opioid crisis. How in hell a border wall will better a situation where the pills are readily available from licensed quacks who should be stripped of their right to practice medicine and thrown in jail for a very long stretch she doesn't explain. But then I doubt she truly understands the problem. And didn't we try Just Say No as a birth control method under Nancy Reagan? It didn't work then in that context and why anyone would think it will work now in this situation is absolutely beyond me.

Some years ago I was in history class which used Salem Possessed as a reading assignment. I remember on segment of the book fairly well where the authors mapped out the spatial relationships between the accused and their accusers. The two groups lived very separate lives and interacted very little--that is, the accusers really didn't know the people they accused very well at all. This leading piece at Axios reminded me of that. The most Republican districts have the fewest immigrants. If this were 325 years or so ago the Republican representatives from those districts might be accusing them of witchcraft instead of simply wanting to deport them.

I thought #45's equating not applauding his State of the Union speech with treason reflected his monumental ego and his poor little hurt feelings. However, Senator Tammy Duckworth responds with wonderful precision to "Cadet Bone Spurs."

Grist has outlined who exactly is advising #45 on his environmental policies. It isn't pretty. I recently saw some side-by-side photos of major cities in the 1950s and today showing the effect of efforts to clean up air pollution. Stark contrasts. And the administration is trying so hard to "Make America Great Again." In too many ways the "good old days" were only old, not good.

This is good for a smile.

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Not much to say for the last couple of days. I have been trying to understand my lethargy (for lack of a better description) in blogging on what had been my usual subjects. My interest in news/politics/current events isn't flagging but I find myself ignoring the majority of what comes through in my feeds--reading the headlines and nothing much else. Something clicked over the weekend and I think I have found the answer. I never had any interest in "reality" shows. I never watched even one episode of Survivor or Big Brother or Dancing With the Stars, or The Apprentice, or whatever. Thanks to #45 and the Repthuglicans (for the most part) politics is now a damned (un)reality show. I am not just not interested but am actively annoyed. I am annoyed because I can't ignore the Washington (faux)reality show: its consequences are potentially too serious. I also never had any interest in the "infotainment" shows--the ones that focus on celebrities about whom I know little and want to know less. But the news has become overwhelmingly infotainment. And, again, I am not just not interested but annoyed. To get what few gems of information exist in the news I have to find out more than I want to about people in whom I am totally  uninterested. And while the programs focus on inconsequential personalities, real news gets ignored.

Every now and then I do find some interesting gems like this commentary. I did almost that in 2016. The only Republican I voted for is our mayor who has done a lot of good here. I didn't vote for any presidential candidate but almost wish I had voted for Clinton. Charles Blow has a nice companion piece in the NY Times.  The whole political scene is insane and brings to my mind the ancient saying "those the gods want to destroy they first make mad." I wonder if that holds for nations or societies as for individuals.

Crabby Old Lady (a.k.a., Ronni Bennett) says what we have been saying about drug commercials on TV and a good bit more about advertising aimed at older folks. We don't watch much TV any more but the little time we do watch is saturated with political ads and pharma ads. Another annoyance to deal with. One thing she didn't mention is how often the conditions for which the drug is prescribed are among the "horrendous side effects" recited "at auctioneer's speed." Really??? You want us to take a pill for a condition that gives us the condition we are being treated for?? Crap!!

Goodness!!! February 1st already. Only a month and a bit before seed starting season. I haven't decided more than the biggies: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant. I need to review my seeds and see what else I should start and when. I have never had much luck starting herb seeds so I will rely on garden shop and farm market starts for those. I usually fill my gardens slowly from mid-May when our danger of frost is (hopefully) over through the end of June. I have a couple/three dozen+ starter pots made from toilet paper cores and about another dozen left to finish my current supply. It is one of those things we accumulate over the winter.

I am progressing on the Catherine's Wheel stash buster afghan--a couple of rows most days. I just cleaned out the storage space in the hassock where my current crochet projects are stored safe from the cats.