We had rain overnight and early this morning. We expect more and higher temperatures. Maybe--just maybe--things will thaw enough for me to get some work done in the gardens. I also need to sweep the patio because the dead leaves have piled up in various hard to reach (for me though not for the wind) spots. I checked a bit earlier and the top inch to inch-and-a-half of the soil is loose. May not sound like much but that is a big improvement.

Tom Englehardt has a good article this morning on an "All-American" cult of personality centered on, of course, #45. We have always been contemptuous of foreign cults of personality (as with Mao, Stalin, the Kims of N. Korea, etc.) but, over the time since #45 announced his run for the presidency, I have felt that we are traveling down our own road toward something all too similar.

When you combine the information in Englehardt's article with this one by Patrick Watson you have a truly depressing scene. We used to say "seeing is believing" and Missouri is famous as the "show me state," but how much of what we see can we believe. Worse, I wonder how much of what we see, though it may be "real," is really all that important or is it merely fluff (our version of "circuses") that serves to distract us from more important issues.