August 29

It is nice and cool today. Temperatures are in the mid 70s which feels real good after nearly a week in the 90s. I should get some garden work done but am feeling lazy. I just finished a cross-stitched table cloth and put it in the wash. I generally do small tablecloths now--no more than a 50x50 (inches). I have another stamped for embroidery that is about 3/4 done.

August 30

August 31

Welcome to the last day of August. Another month pretty well gone. This year has seemed to fly by and crawl along at the same time. I saw a post on Facebook a while ago that claimed the poster was going to stay up New Year's Eve not so much to welcome in the new year as to make sure "that bitch 2020 leaves."

David Kaiser has a good take on our current time in our history. We have a lot of rage in our country and it has been building for some time. Does anyone remember the statistics concerning the economic condition for millennials and later generations? They are, on average, well behind where their boomer parents at the same age: more indebted (thanks to student loans), lower job/career prospects, less likely to marry and start a family or buy a house. They are the first generation with such dismal prospects in about 100 years. Not that boomers have had such a wonderful time considering the number who were laid off in the last recession (only 10 years in the rear view mirror) and either never got an equivalent position or any new job at all. Remember that the labor force participation has been somewhere in the low 60%s for most of that time meaning that many exited the labor force all together. And that was before COVID. I won't even go into the racial divide. You can do that on your own. Who ever wins the election is in for a bumpy ride and we with him.

September 1

"They Choke Sometimes" so saith our miserable excuse for a president of police who use deadly force inappropriately comparing that to "missing a putt." That was on the news this morning. My problem with that--when a golfer misses a putt no one dies of bullet wounds. Nor are bystanders at risk from ricochet or pass through bullets.

Theodora Gross has an a post that resonates with me. "Walking on air" about sums up my feelings also and has for sometime although I had no words to describe the feeling. The world has a surreal, almost dreamlike, quality. The neighborhood we live in has not changed at all and all the usual activities continue. The old man across the street still walks his dog several times a day, goes out in his truck (sometimes with the dog, sometimes not), and sits outside in good weather or in the open garage if it is cold or wet. People still walk by or jog. I don't know when they stopped wearing masks on their walks/jogs. When we drive anywhere the walkers/joggers rarely wear masks nowadays. In the stores, though, almost everyone does. We haven't had any of the aggressive anti-maskers here--at least not at any time I have been out. The turmoil the news has covered elsewhere hasn't come here and I am crossing my fingers it doesn't. We have already made our decision to take advantage of the early in person voting option though the lines at the polls for the primaries were not at all long. We have no idea of what will happen in the fall with the economy, the election, or the pandemic but are sure it will be different. The ground seems awfully far down. Indiana is stuck at opening level 4.5 with about 800+ new cases per day. The governor has extended the mandatory mask requirements and the restrictions on large gatherings, bars, restaurants for another 30 days.  Those don't really affect us much. the only large gatherings we attended (with our masks) were the visitation and funeral for my sister-in-law. I did notice that almost no one at the church wore masks.

Speaking of voting--last night on one of the news segments covered a projection of a "Red Mirage" on election night: the votes from in person voting would give #45 a large electoral college lead that would be reversed as the mail in votes were counted over the next week. I went searching for the Axios story and found it here. The conclusion depends on 1) a larger share of Democratic voters than Republican voters remaining fearful of voting in person because of the pandemic, 2) a larger share of Democratic voters than Republican voters for reason #1 voting by mail, and that 3) the counting of those mail in ballots will take considerable time. Here early voting opens up in the first few days of October and our state (and, I think, Illinois from the ads on our TV) are pushing early in-person and early mail-in voting. The emphasis is on "early". And depending on how things go over the next two month we may not have as much COVID fear as projected in the study. We are all learning how to live with this thing.

As if we needed anything else to cast a shadow on a year that has been getting deeper in shade as time has gone by, here is this item. What the hell do we pay those idiots for anyway?

For a good long time, well before COVID and the shutdowns, I had been reading about "shit-life syndrome". You can see one of the articles here from January. Number 45 can, like the proverbial clock (though not always as often) be right when he talked about the COVID causing an uptick in suicides and drug problems. Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept talks about why Americans are "dying of despair" and cites a New Yorker article from March of this year which notes that our society is (and has been) fraying leaving many people bereft of social and emotional support. Unfortunately, #45's solution--everybody going back to work COVID be damned--isn't either effective or satisfying.