November 29

I have been busy rearranging the What-not room for the last few days. Earlier in the week one of the cats decided to try to jump onto a small space on one of the high shelves, missed and pulled over two sets of drawers on the shelf below. Those were both about 3 feet tall and full of various materials we don't often use but don't want to discard. Given how heavy those are we were grateful the little monster didn't get seriously hurt. And thankfully nothing was really damaged. However, I decide that it was time to rearrange things into a more useable space. That large amount of yearn and my sister-in-law's stamped embroidery pieces needed to find a way into the mass of stuff in a way I could find the things I wanted. I am almost finished with the putting things where they should go and ready to take the vacuum to the rug which it badly needs. I once used that room quite a lot but since we got a wireless set up a few years ago it has become a catch all--hence the name What-not Room.

Ugo Bardi put up an interesting post on Cassandra's Legacy today. I have thought for some time that, by the time,  humans, individually and collectively, recognize a problem it already too late to really fix the problem. I remember looking up the historical levels of CO2 when I started reading about 350.org. That number, 350, is supposed to be the safe level of CO2 which was actually passed in...1985. For the last five or six years I have been reading articles of fishing seasons for various fish species cancelled or curtailed because the populations had fallen too low or, in a couple of cases, toxic algae tainted the fish making them unsafe for consumption. I suspect that we will try to carry on as usual no matter what. We can see that in the almost desperation to have some sort of season for our major "spectator" sports which are limping along after removing or severely limiting the spectators. Also witness the desperation of merchants to have a massive "Black Friday" and of shoppers desperately wanting to go out and shop. I have seen "Black Friday" and Christmas ads for more than a month. But I asked almost two decades ago what happens to a consumer society when the consumer can't consume any more. We began finding out back in the Great Recession and had only just gotten back to levels of consumption pre-recession.

I didn't read all of this long article but it confirms some of what I have been reading on prepper and homesteading blogs--there was a shortage of canning jars and lids this year.