September 25

It looks like the weather will be cool, dry, and sunny today. I plan to sweep up and tidy up on the patio. Some of the plants were torn up by the high winds we had a couple of days ago but the rain kept me indoors. I need to spray the roses again as well.

Yesterday I straightened up a small corner of my What-not Room because I lost my quilting rulers in the jumble. That is now done and the rulers are on an improvised wall mount using command-strip hooks and a length of gardening twist-tie. I want to cut the pieces to start a 'disappearing nine patch' quilt. That bug is biting again.

I have seen several economic articles that refer to the "Great Resignation" because of the numbers of people who have or are leaving jobs for new ventures. And then there are the "Take This Job And Shove It" articles though this one is probably the one from the most pissed off (now former) employee. Having spent way too much as a retail clerk (I never felt like an "associate") I sympathize totally with the woman who posted her resignation delivered over the Walmart intercom.

As if we needed any more proof that Texas Republicans are batshit insane look at this. They are not alone. Some of their ilk in Arizona want yet another "full signature" audit after the "Cyber Ninjas" (fr)audit  found that Biden did win and my a very, very slightly larger margin. Oh, I almost forgot--Texas Republicans are going to do an audit of the votes in four of their largest counties after the Loser In Florida demanded one.

I wonder if this is a sign of times to come. Earlier today Mom got sucked into a poll that asked a lot about her attitudes toward marijuana and what the state should do about it. We think it was for politicos who want to continue criminalizing it and heavier state intrusion. Mom disagreed with most of the positions described.

 22 September--cold, windy and wet

Very chilly and wet. We can always tell the temperature by looking across the street as the old man who lives there walks his dog. If he is wearing shorts and no shirt it is very warm. If it is just warm he will add a t-shirt; longs sleeves and long pants if it is cooler. This morning he was wearing a jacket. The temperature was about 58F when we went out shopping. I am not ready for really cold weather but cool, or even a bit chilly, is nice after the heat of late June through early September.

A commentator on one of the news/talk shows remarked on the anger in the "vaxed"vs."unvaxed" split. The anti-vax people have always been on a hair trigger but he thought the rising heat of the people who have been vaccinated was new. They seem to have gone from bewildered to ballistic in record time. The speaker quoted the Roman orator Seneca that anger is a person's response to frustrated expectations. Everyone waited anxiously for the vaccines to come out thinking that all would be well when we all dutifully lined up and got our jabs. He said he shared that view and was surprised and angry that it hasn't  come to pass. I was a bit amused by that reaction and realized that I was amused because I hadn't shared the expectation. I had noticed the response of our group of anti-vaccination idiots (not much covered and easily passed over) and had looked up the percentages of people who get flu shots every year (only about 45%). So when the stats came out that 65% of those eligible had received at least one shot I was pleasantly surprised.

This is an interesting article posted on Naked Capitalism about the trend of fewer men enrolling in both 2 and 4 year colleges. I have argued for some time that the cost of tertiary education far outweigh the benefits for most people. And too much of that cost is covered by debt.

 16 September

Another sunny day with mild temps. I got out and watered everything and filled the bird feeder. The birds are back and feeding like crazy. We hadn't seen many at all since we have had this streak of high 80s and 90s. I might get back out and dead head some more plants. I am also thinking about what needs to be taken out and which pots need to be emptied. The biggest containers I never empty and for the last couple of years I haven't even cleared the dead plants out. The remains provide a good ground cover which prevents the rain from splattering soil out of the pots. The smaller ones I empty and pile up under the table/planting bench for the winter season. Last week I cleared out the shed and threw away a whole lot of pots that came with the larger transplants of the past few years. I have plenty of more sturdy and attractive pots left.

I still have a bit of a mental stutter when I go to the stores and see empty shelves. While shopping we went into the pet department and saw almost NO Friskies canned cat food. The shelves were bare. And this isn't the first time for that brand and has happened with other brands as well. I won't even go into the gaps in the cleaning, paper goods and other aisles. It isn't nearly as bad but I did see a couple of signs limiting the number of certain item people can purchase at a given time. Our little dairy was out of string cheese and lard. Their suppliers are short on supplies. I remember when you would never see a gap on the shelves. The first time I remember seeing that kind of thing was about four years ago at a CVS drug store waiting for Mom to see the RN on duty. The shelves opposite the waiting area had some gaps and a lot of places where only three or four items were displayed. That was before the pandemic and its consequences. I did two stints as an inventory counter--the last about 20 years ago--and I almost never saw bare shelves. Most were so packed it made counting accurately difficult. How times have changed.

 September 15

Another nice sunny day but very little in the way of rain. We had to do our grocery shopping so the watering will be delayed until tomorrow.

I was somewhat bummed out way back when in the early days of the pandemic the stores backed up by the health departments and the state banned our reusable grocery bags. They claimed that it was a health issue because (at that time) contaminated surfaces were thought to be the major route to the spread of the virus. But even after studies showed that the virus was actually spread by droplets (and later aerosols) the bans remained. Things have loosened up a bit. We are back to taking our bags to the grocery store and the dairy. I might begin to use them again at other stores soon. This little item came through my news feeds that touches on the problem. California probably soon have a law that forces the packaging manufacturers to use the recycling symbol far less often since most plastics may be theoretically recyclable but aren't really in the real world. Of course the industry is pissed and resisting with all its might. The pandemic was a godsend for them and they loudly proclaimed how much more sanitary their single use bags were. Things have changed and the pollution from those plastics is moving back into focus.

John Michael Greer has a new post on Ecosophia on what wealth really is and it isn't gold or dollars or blips in a bank's computer.

 September 14--half past another month

They promised us rain today and we haven't had any yet. It might show up later. Mom got her reminder to renew the car tags and her license. We went to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles office first thing this morning and got it done. The clerk who took care of her drivers license wanted her to take the paperwork over to the self-serve kiosk to finish off but she refused. Didn't see why the clerk couldn't do it right there while they were doing the rest. The staff are trying to move people as much as possible to the do-it-yourself model. After balking the clerk did finish the transaction.

I wonder if the BVM is having the same trouble we are seeing in the stores. I think most have signs up saying they are hiring. We stopped off at the grocery store to pick up a few items we needed ahead of our regular shopping at the regional big box chain store (not Walmart or Target) at the end of the week. Mom asked if I had seen the notice on the door as we went in. It asked for customer patience as the lines were likely to be longer because of the "labor shortage." I hadn't seen that one but while we were in line at the BVM waiting to get in one of the other people said that that grocery was going to put the self-check-out stands back in. They had taken them out several years ago after a run of three or four years because the customers refused to use them. We were among those who didn't like to use them. We like to gossip a bit with the clerks many of whom we had seen and talked to for years. But the clerk we talked to this morning noted that those clerks had quit in droves over the last few months. She gave the usual litany of reasons: low pay, long and/or uncertain hours, and a lot of very rude customers. Since most could qualify for Social Security the decided they could do without the job and its headaches.

I think about that situation at the grocery store and articles I have read, often by former wait staff or store clerks, which describe the same thing all over the country and in other countries. On flatly told the pundits (if they bothered to read her article) that people wanted to work but for themselves and not for the employers who paid little and demanded much. I also think of the article from last year in the Guardian which talked about the roots of the opioid crisis which the author described as "shit life syndrome." But it is so much easier for the politicians to declare that people are simply lazy. Sen. Joe Manchin demonstrated that when he said the the "child tax credit" people are now getting and the Biden Administration wants to make permanent should be contingent on people working. I guess he doesn't realize that to get a tax credit you have to file taxes which means you have to have an income which means you are already or have been working. How f***ing clueless can you be?

TomDispatch has another good article dissecting our misadventure in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, I think it will go into the same memory hole that similar articles on Vietnam went into. It is obvious that we really didn't learn anything then and probably won't now and in the future. If you change the names, it reads the same.

I read something about this yesterday. A new report from 18 experts have issued a report which calls into question the notion that most of us don't need to get COVID booster shots. A few with specific conditions are an exception. I remarked to Mom that the decision to get a vaccination was an easy compared to the decision to get a booster since jury is still out.

 September 13

It is still too early to see what is happening outside. Last weather I saw predicted sunny and dry. We'll see.

Found this item this morning. Some people can't accept the notion of climate change but if insurance companies and animals do perhaps we should also. I have seen articles for some time about animals changing their behavior, diets, and ranges. I remember an example from a history of the industrial revolution in England involving the color shift in moths in the industrial cities in the mid 1800s.  They originally displayed a whiteish color that blended with the trees and over a couple of decades they changed to a sooty gray because it blended in better with the soot covered trees. It didn't take long at all.

12 September--What we remember

I tried, and for the most part succeeded, in ignoring the 9/11 memorials though the TV was was super saturated with them. It was one of the handful of incidents I will always remember where I was and what I was doing as it happened. I was driving to morning classes and listening to the news on the radio. Normally it would have been music. When I got to my destination they had already put a TV outside the offices and people were crowded around it. That remained the situation for the rest of the day with people cycling in and out as they went to class or met other demands. I felt somewhat disconnected from the events and surprised by some of the reactions even months later. On woman who was finishing her program and was interviewing for jobs balked at going to work for a company whose offices were in a Chicago skyscraper. Another didn't want to go into Chicago at all she was so afraid of another attack. I didn't share that fear which seemed so pervasive and I wasn't enthusiastic about rushing into either Iraq or Afghanistan. And I became less enthusiastic as time passed and more details were revealed and much of the "evidence" supporting the wars turned out to be utterly fraudulent.

I always thought a "war on terror" was ridiculous like so many other so-called wars over my lifetime. Terror had no territory for us to conquer. Just as poverty had no territory and communism has no territory. There were people who were poor or who believed in communism or used terror to achieve their political ends but those people could be anywhere. Ideas, strategies, and conditions have no borders. We invaded Afghanistan because its Taliban government allowed Al Qaida to set up shop there but didn't do much about Pakistan even though Osama bin Laden found refuge in the western part of the country and lived there for years before U.S. forces killed him in a raid that strained relations further with an allegedly allied sovereign country.

David Kaiser's latest post makes some astute observations on the impact of the "war on terror" on our government, defense industry, and society generally. Spoiler: none of it is good.

Now that President Biden has declared the end of the "forever wars' one would think we could reorder our financial priorities and scale back on the defense spending which already exceeds, if I remember rightly, the next ten big military spenders in the world. But, as Alfred McCoy at tomdispatch notes, the administration is proposing another almost $750billion for the Defense Department. That at the time when certain legislators are balking at a "human infrastructure" bill that comes in a $3.5 trillion for years which comes out to $350 billion per year--in other words half the Pentagon spending. Our Powers That Be are far more comfortable buying bombs and sexy high tech toy (many of which don't do what was promised) than make sure we have child care, elder care, medical care, and education for our citizens.

 9 September

Another nice cool day with more clouds than yesterday and a chance of showers. We noticed that the local Walgreens had their flu vaccines in stock when we stopped on our last shopping trip. We went in to get the shots today. It took a bit longer today than it did last year perhaps because we were so early in the season but also, I think because several people were signed up to get Covid shots. The store didn't have a general mask policy except for the small room where the shots were administered. They would have given us a throwaway but we always carry one (or more) of our own nowadays. 

I found this on TomDispatch today. Jane Braxton Little tells her story of evacuating as the Dixie Fire took out much of the old Gold Rush town of Greenville. She lost her office as that building and most of the downtown burned but her house survived. We are used to seeing news stories/pictures of refugees in other parts of the world. I guess we should get used to seeing our own people as refugees in our own land.

 8 September

It is another nice day today. Sun, dry, and mild temps. Yesterday was hot and muggy which warmed the house to the point where I decided to turn on the air. We did finally get some rain over night--enough so I don't have to water plants today. The clean up in Louisiana and other places hit by Ida even as more rain is predicted to hit those same places. I remember a remark by one of the anchors on one of the news programs talking about the costs of these storms. He has a friend who works as a risk analyst for an insurance company and said he doesn't do much of that any more--he is too busy writing checks to cover the insured damage. I remember reading several times that, whatever the politicians and others might say about climate change, the insurance companies are taking the threat seriously. It is costing them a lot of money.

Tom Engelhardt is back at TomDispatch after a two week holiday. As usual his post today encapsulates much of what I have been thinking as I watched the sloppy withdrawal from Afghanistan, the legislative games in Washington, the cruel legislation passed and signed into law in Texas which other red state governors are salivating to replicate, and so much else that would once have been unthinkable.

 September 3

Cool and bright today. Looks like it will be dry. I got out to do some trimming in the gardens and took out the dyers woodruff as well. I still want to get a handle on the roses and the chamomile. I put the marigolds in small pots in the wire holders on the fence. That gets them out of the way so I can more easily move things around. I say "more easily" because there is nothing easy about moving 5gal buckets full of dirt and plant.

Watching the news is painful and infuriating. The responses to the pull out in Afghanistan was bound to be messy and it was. The Republican are showing their boorish, self-serving, stupid partisanship. The only thing the want is back in power. The Democrats aren't quite as bad but they are letting their fixation on the perfect get in the way of getting the best out of the situation that can be gotten. We could have gotten out after we kicked the Taliban out, or after we killed bin Laden and had a legitimate claim to a victory. As it is we have a muddle--neither victory nor outright defeat--with a load of broken promises that probably could never have been kept. One thing I hope comes out is that we put a stake into that vampire ideology of "nation building."

I noticed that President Biden noted the toll the long mess in Afghanistan has taken on the 1% of our population who served there. Several commentators noted that all those advocating for continuation had no children in the military. That is the weakness of our current system. I think that all citizens should serve a three year tour of duty in the military (what ever service) when they turn 18, with a further three years in the reserves. No exemptions. If you are bound for college--wait til after your service. If you married young or had children young--you still serve. Women serve equally with the men.

Hurricane Ida did a job on Louisiana, Mississippi and all states between there and Maine. The best news our of New Orleans was that the levy system held but the electric grid is almost a total loss. It will take weeks to get that back and I wonder if parts of it will never be rebuilt. One of the news reporters asked one of the politicians why they didn't bury the electric lines after Katrina. Answer: too expensive. I wonder how expensive rebuilding the system to what it was before will be.

We have had a couple of new peeves lately. Over two days this week Mom received seven e-mails from politicians begging for gifts--and not a one is from our state or had declared for a national office. One was Ted "Cancun" Cruz. And no, he is not one of our senators. Then she got requests from charities she has already donated money to in the last month. She is getting rather tired of the constant pleas and is refusing to give any more. They used to be satisfied with a single yearly donation but now want monthly gifts that they will be glad to relieve you of the need to actually write a check and post it.

 September 2

We decided to go up to our favorite dairy yesterday. It was an impromptu trip brought on by our realization that our milk would not last til next week when we were going to go anyway. They had their yearly offering of mums so I picked up the new plant I planned on. It is now transplanted into one of my empty 5 gal buckets. Then, since we were out already, we went to our favorite butcher shop and stocked up. After the freezer died we decided to use up most of that stock (we did save all of the meats and most of the other foods) and then replenish after we had decided what what we really needed. We wanted to simplify what we kept on hand. Needless to say--we didn't do much after we got home and got everything back home.

On the drive I noticed a number of trees already turning. It seems a bit early. I don't know if the trees are reacting to the hot temps, lack of rain for the last three weeks or so, or the cooler temps especially at night. We have been able to shut off the air and open the windows and doors. The cats are happy and have spent a lot of time in front of the open windows.

 August 31

Well, August is gone. I will have to change the door wreath sometime in the next couple of days. Change out the summer wreath for a fall wreath. It has cooled down enough for me to turn off the air and open windows. The breeze feels real nice. What ever systems the weather people saw either fell apart or jumped around us. Not enough moisture to fill a thimble. I got out in the gardens today and took out the peppers and the poor little dahlia that has looked sickly for the last couple of weeks. I also got the white rose transplanted. I wanted to give it plenty of time to get rooted in its new container before winter. I called it a day out there after I got everything watered and making mental note of the things I want to get done tomorrow. I finally identified my mystery plant which has begun to flower. It is Japanese indigo. I didn't plant it this year so I think it seeded itself and the seeds germinated when the soil warmed in the spring. I will leave it alone and see if I get more next year.